Flowers and Gardens | Inspiration for the Spirit

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.” —Lady Bird Johnson

When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden. —Minnie Aumonier

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heavens? —A. J. Balfour

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest, and upright— like the broad-faced sunflowers and the hollyhock. —Henry Ward Beecher

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into. —Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858

Flowers are love’s truest language. —Park Benjamin

I don’t know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice. —Roland A. Beowne

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character. —Lydia M. Child

“When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.” —Chinese proverb

Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them. —Chinese proverb

Look at the flowers beneath your feet. They neither card nor spin . . . they neither sow nor weave; yet King Solomon shone less brightly than they. —Jesus Christ

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. —Marcus Tullius Cicero

How can one help shivering with delight when one’s hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade, and stiff with newborn vigor! —Colette

“You love the roses—so do I. I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush. Why will it not? Then all the valley would be pink and white and soft to tread on. They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be like sleeping and like waking, all at once!” —George Eliot

Earth laughs in flowers. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hamatreya

Flowers . . . are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. —Audra Foveo

May the stars carry your sadness away. May the flowers fill your heart with beauty. May hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong. —Chief Dan George

Flowers bring to a liberal and gentlemanly mind, the remembrance of honesty, comeliness, and all kinds of virtue. —John Gerard

Be like the flower . . . turn your face to the sun. —Kahlil Gibran

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. —Jean Giraudoux

“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” —Emma Goldman

The Amen! of nature is always a flower. —Oliver Wendell Holmes

Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms. —Ikkyū

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. —Indian proverb

Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy. —Robert G. Ingersoll

Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower. —Shigenori Kameoka

“The gardens that make us happiest flourish because we have taken the time to make sure they feed our souls and fill a special place in our lives.” —Lindley Karstens

Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive. —John Keats

Flowers are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade. —Rudyard Kipling

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. —The Koran

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. —Abraham Lincoln forsythia

Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia—pure, undiluted, untouched joy. —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise. —James Lowell

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers? —Maurice Maeterlinck

“If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.” —Andrew Mason

Lowly, with a broken neck, the crocus lays her cheek to mire. —George Meredith

Flowers construct the most charming geometries: Circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass, seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes. —Duane Michals, The Vanishing Act

Flowers feed the soul. —Hadith Mohammed

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. —Claude Monet

When bright flowers bloom, parchment crumbles, my words fade, the pen has dropped. —Morpheus

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords. —John Muir

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. —Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Each flower is a soul opening out to nature. —Gerald de Nerval

“To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.” —Beverly Nichols

In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends. —Kozuko Okakura

Look at the flowers—for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. —Osho

Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses. —Ovid

He who wants a rose must respect the thorn. —Persian proverb

If, I can someday see Claude Monet’s garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colors and tones, less an old-fashioned flower garden than a colour garden, so to speak, one that achieves an effect not entirely nature’s, because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colors will bloom at the same time, harmonized in an infinite stretch of blue or pink. —Marcel Proust

Today, as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle. —Edgar Quinet, Philosophy of Human History, 1825

Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep let-go. See Spirit opening millions of flowers every day without forcing the buds. —Bhagwan Shree Rayneesh

“Look at us,” said the violets blooming at her feet, “All last winter we slept in the seeming death, but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you.” —Edward Payson Rod

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. —John RuskinThe actual flower is the plant’s highest fulfilment . . . they are here first of all for delight. —John Ruskin

Flowers really do intoxicate me. —Vita Sackville-West

A flowerless room is a soul-less room, to my way of thinking; but even on solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it. —Vita Sackville-West

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought. —Sophie Scholl

In the hope of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. —Albert Schweitzer

To pick a flower is so much more satisfying than just observing it, or photographing it . . . So in later years, I have grown in my garden as many flowers as possible for children to pick. —Anne Scott-James

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Silently a flower blooms, in silence it falls away; yet here now, at this moment, at this place, the world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming. This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom: The glory of eternal life is fully shining here. —Zenkei Shibayama

“Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.” —Veronica A. Shoffstall

If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad. —John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections

A rose is a rose is a rose. —Gertrude Stein

The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day in rhythmic measure. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth into numberless waves of flowers. —Rabindranath Tagore

He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world with a passion for flowers in his soul. —Celia Thaxter

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve. —Henry David Thoreau

To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy, than to attempt to fully understand. —Henry T. Tuckerman

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. —Abram L. Urban

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy. —Lope de Vega

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” —Alice Walker

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones. —Forbes Watson

Flowers do not force their way with great strife. Flowers open to perfection slowly in the sun. —White Eagle

In the dooryard fronting an old farmhouse near the white-wash’d palings, stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, with every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, with delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, a sprig with its flower I break. —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1865