Famous Quotes & Sayings

P. G. Wodehouse

Flowers are happy things.

Mary Wollstonecraft

The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strenght state; usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.

Mary Howitt

Heart's ease! one could look for half a day Upon this flower, and shape in fancy out Full twenty different tales of love and sorrow, That gave this gentle name.

Mary Howitt

Yes, in the poor man's garden grow Far more than herbs and flowers - Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind, And Joy for weary hours.

Mary Howitt

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Marguerite Young

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there.

Nicholas Culpeper

The Herbs ought to be distilled when they are in their greatest vigor, and so ought the Flowers also.

Margaret Atwood

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

Kathryn Lasky

Far away if first black, But it shall be back Over field Over flower In the twilight hour. We are home in our tree. We are owls, we are free. As we go, this we know Glaux is nigh.

Mary Oliver

And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

Mary Oliver

The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.

Mary Oliver

Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?

Mary Oliver

When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body as a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. [from the poem "When Death Comes"]

Mary Oliver

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Pope John Paul II

Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth's habitat, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that 'flower bed'-which is the earth, our dwelling place.

Pietro Metastasio

The canker which the trunk conceals is revealed by the leaves, the fruit, or the flower.

Pietro Metastasio

The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.

Rachael Ray

When you really want to show some love, keep the flowers and say it with spaghetti.

Rabindranath Tagore

The greed for fruit misses the flower.

Paulo Coelho

A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing — a flower in the process of expressing its potential.

Once we begin to appreciate that the apparent destructiveness of the toddler in taking apart a flower or knocking down sand castles is in fact a constructive effort to understand unity, we are able to revise our view of the situation, moving from reprimand and prohibition to the intelligent channeling of his efforts and the fostering of discovery.

Pliny the Elder

There is an herb named in Latine Convolvulus (i.e. with wind), growing among shrubs and bushes, with carrieth a flower not unlike to this Lilly, save that it yeeldeth no smell nor hath those chives within; for whitenesse they resemble one another very much, as if Nature in making this floure were a learning and trying her skill how to frame the Lilly indeed.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

Phillip Lim

I try to always have flowers in the house. I have a florist in Chinatown, and they deliver orchids every two weeks. I like living with living things.

Phillip Lim

When people ask about inspirations, and you're like 'oh, it was a flower or a mountain or a pony', some people just think you're insane. I'm worried to come across that way.

Phoebe Cary

I know not which I love the most, Nor which the comeliest shows, The timid, bashful violet Or the royal-hearted rose: The pansy in purple dress, The pink with cheek of red, Or the faint, fair heliotrope, who hangs, Like a bashful maid her head.

Phoebe Cary

You may wear your virtues as a crown, As you walk through life serenely, And grace your simple rustic gown With a beauty more than queenly. Though only one for you shall care, One only speak your praises; And you never wear in your shining hair, A richer flower than daisies.

Nathaniel Parker Willis

If e'er I win a parting token, 'Tis something that has lost its power-- A chain that has been used and broken, A ruin'd glove, a faded flower; Something that makes my pleasure less, Something that means--forgetfulness.

Nathaniel Parker Willis

There is to me a daintiness about early flowers that touches me like poetry. They blow out with such a simple loveliness among the common herbs of pastures, and breathe their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts whose beatings are too gentle for the world.

Nathaniel Branden

One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Let the black flower blossom as it may!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Mother Teresa

Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you must go and sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody... it is never too small, for this is our love of Christ in action