When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
—Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) American Painter
Flowers are happy things.
—P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) British Novelist, Short-story Writer, Playwright
I wonder what spendthrift chose to spill
Such a bright gold under my windowsill!
Is it fair gold? Does it glitter still?
Bless me! It’s a daffodil!
—Celia Thaxter (1835–94) American Poet, Writer
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
—Theodore Roethke (1908–63) American Poet
Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
—Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American Botanist, Scientist
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children — honored as the jewelry of God only by them — when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.
—Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) English Essayist, Critic
Every flower is a soul blossoming in Nature.
—Gerard de Nerval (1808–55) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
You like buttercups, dewy sweet,
And crocuses, framed in snow;
I like roses, born of the heat,
And the red carnation’s glow.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
Flowers leave their fragrance on the hand that bestows them.
—Chinese Proverb
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Matsuo Basho (1644–94) Japanese Poet
To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet