My Pet Peeves: Guys just don't seem to stop and smell the flowers, do they?
Tips for Gals: As WikiQuote says:
Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts (1858), p. 234
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
William Cowper, Olney hymns, 'Light Shining Out of Darkness', June 1778.
Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.
William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book VI, line 241.
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted (1933).
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).
Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions, just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), X.
Above his head
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,
Together intertwined and trammell'd fresh;
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries.
John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book IV, line 413.
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill
Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines
Savory latter-mint, and columbines.
John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book IV, line 575.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Csesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 19. FitzGerald's translation.
One thing is certain and the rest is lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 63. FitzGerald's translation.
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
James Russell Lowell, To the Dandelion, st. 1.
"Aye," said Math, "let us seek, thou and I, by our magic and enchantment to conjure a wife for him out of flowers"...And then they took the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they called forth the very fairest and best endowed maiden that mortal ever saw, and baptized her with the baptism they used at that time, and named her Blodeuedd.
"Math Son of Mathonwy", Mabinogion (Jones and Jones, 1989, p. 68).
Anemones and seas of gold,
And new-blown lilies of the river,
And those sweet flow'rets that unfold
Their buds on Camadera's quiver.
Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Light of the Harem.
There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.
John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916).
Where flowers degenerate man cannot live.
Napoleon, as quoted in The table talk and opinions of Napoleon Buonaparte (1868), p. 148
Color is the ultimate in art. It is still and will always remain a mystery to us, we can only apprehend it intuitively in flowers.
Philipp Otto Runge, in a letter (February 1802) quoted in L. Eitner Neoclassicism and Romanticism, 1750-1850: Enlightenment (1970), p. 150
Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act TV, scene 2, line 220.
These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act IV, scene 2, line 296.
When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.
William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 904.
In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery.
William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), ActV, scene 5, line 74.
I know a bank, where the wild thyme blows
Where ox-lips, and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene 1, line 251. Changed by Stervens to "whereon the wild thyme blows," and "luscious woodbine" to "lush woodbine".
To strew thy green with flowers; the yellows, blues,
The purple violets, and marigolds.
William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607-08), Act IV, scene 1, line 15.
The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors.
William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 81.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can blast the flower,
Even when in most unwary hour
It blooms in Fancy's bower.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can rend the shrine
In which its vermeil splendours shine.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Untitled (1810); titled "Love's Rose" by William Michael Rossetti in Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1870).
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, st. 1 (1816).
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Question, st. 2 (1820).
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Jane: The Invitation (1822), line 17.
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower;
No more doth flourish after first decay,
That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower
Of many a lady and many a paramour.
Gather therefore the rose whilst yet in prime,
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower.
Gather the rose of love whilst yet in time,
Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book II, Canto XII, Stanza 75.
Roses red and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book HI, Canto VI, Stanza 6.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part I, section xxii, stanza 10.
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sighed for the dawn and thee.
Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 8.
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue;
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes.
James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 529.
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1803).
Say it with flowers.
Slogan coined by Patrick O'Keefe (1872-1934), in 1917, for the Society of American Florists, as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 8.
Let's discuss this further in the comments until we arrive at a consensus, shall we please? Thank you!
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