Quotes, Poems, Links, Readings, Sayings, Lore, Quotatons, Poetry for Gardeners, Walkers and Lovers of the Green Way Part IV (original) (raw)

"Science, or para-science, tells us that geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention, like too much feeding, and weeding and hoeing, inhibits and embarrasses them."
- Victoria Glendinning.

"Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
- Shakespeare, Winters Tale, Act IV, Sc. 3, Line 118

"How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?"
- Andrew Marvel.

"There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals."
- John Ruskin.

"and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun-
rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
- Allen Ginsberg, Sunflower Sutra.

"The love of flowers is really the best teacher of how to grow and understand them."
- Max Schling.

"The largest single flower is the Rafflesia or "corpse flower". They are generally 3 feet in diameter with the record being 42 inches. No species of wild plant produces a flower or blossom that is absolutely black, and so far, none has been developed artificially."
- Plants and Botany Trivia.

"In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.�
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

"I have a garden of my own,
Shining with flowers of every hue;
I loved it dearly while alone,
But I shall love it more with your:
And there the golden bees shall come,
In summer time at the break of morn,
And wake us with their busy hum
Around the Siha's fragrant thorn."
- Thomas Moore, The Casket, 1835.

"O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."
- William Blake.

"What a pity flowers can utter no sound!�A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle ... oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!"
- Henry Ward Beecher.

"Correct handling of flowers refines the personality."
- Bokuyo Takeda.

"In this world
we walk on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers."
- Issa.

"As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring them as if they were human beings. Much laughter I provoke among my friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence. We are on such good terms, my flowers and I."
- Celia Thaxter, 1835-1894.

"Memories are forget-me-nots gathered along life's way,
Pressed close to the human heart into a perennial bouquet."
- Clara Smith Reber.

"Although every flower may possess, secondarily, its own specific symbolism, for all that, flowers generally are symbols of the passive principle. The calix of a flower, like the chalice, is the receptacle of heavenly instrumentality, among the symbols of which dew and rain should be mentioned. Furthermore, the way flowers grow up out of earth and water symbolizes manifestation rising out of these passive elements. ... The allegorical use of flowers is endless."
- Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, 1969.

"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."
- Henri Matisse.

"While Rikko, a high government official of the T'ang dynasty, had a talk with his Zen master, Nansen, the official quoted a saying of Sojo, a noted monk-scholar of an earlier dynasty: "Heaven and earth and I are of the same root. The ten-thousand things and I are of the one substance." Then, he said, "Is not this a most remarkable statement? Nansen called the attention of the visitor to the flowering plant in the garden and said, "People of the world look at these flowers as if they were in a dream."".

"Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem or saying a prayer."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul."
- Luther Burbank.

"The delicate droop of the petals standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child."
- Auguste Rodin.

"Just as the peony represents richness and grace, the chrysanthemum, which blooms in the cold days of late autumn and early winter, represents nobility and elegance. The flower comes in several varieties but originally the chrysanthemum was just a small yellow flower that has been dated back to 5000 BC. After generations of cultivation, the number of varieties grew rapidly. In the Chrysanthemum Book of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), 35 varieties were noted but by the time of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), the number had risen to 136. In Li Shizhen's famous book, "Ben Cao Gang Mu", finished in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), more than 900 varieties of chrysanthemum were listed. Today more than 3,000 varieties are blooming in China."
- Chrysanthemum Flowers

"Like the musician, the painter, the poet, and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made. And he is born to happiness in this vale of tears, to a certain amount of the purest joy that earth can giver her children, joy that is tranquil, innocent, uplifting, unfailing."
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894.

"White ... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black ... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."
- G. K. Chesterton.

"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
- Walt Whitman.

"If all our eyes had the clarity of apples
In a world as altered
As if by the wood betony
And all kinds of basil were the only rulers of the land
It would be good to be together
Both under and above the ground
To be sane as the madwort,
Ripe as corn, safe as sage,
Various as dusty miller and hens & chickens,
In politics as kindly fierce and dragonlike as tarragon,
Revolutionary as the lily."
- Bernadette Mayer, The Garden.

"A glorious flower,
which blooms in spring.
A sidewalk glance,
and our eyes shall sing.

Almost seems,
like a colourful cartoon.
Rainbow tulips,
in the month of June.

Universally supported,
by its long mysterious stem.
Prior to blooming,
we anticipate the gem.

It's all a fairy tale,
Purple ones are vividly sharp.
Expecting an angel,
on a unicorn with a harp.

Yellow, pink, orange,
serene, calm, white.
Hearts are lifted,
with a mere sight.

The beauty of it all,
is just like a spell.
With a thousand tulip fields,
not a single, I'd sell."
- Martin Dejnicki,Poems about Flowers

"To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat."
- Beverley Nichols.

"Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together, drawing them from their homes."
- Clare Ansberry, The Women of Troy Hill.

"An angel, legend has it, took pity on a little shepherd girl who had nothing to give to the Infant Jesus in his manger. The angel handed her a weed, but first transformed it into this beautiful flower of winter... the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger.
- Allen Lacy, The Gardener's Eye, 1991, p. 14.

"Just as the bee takes the nectar and leaves without damaging the color or scent of the flowers, so should the sage act in a village."
- Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha, Pali Cannon.

"White dew-
one drop
on each thorn"
- Buson.

"When, lo! I mark a little way apart
The sovereign glory of this waning year
That now, alone, unheralded hath come,
In gorgeous robes - alas, my fickle heart
Forgets the dead, and laughs that she is here,
The royal queen of fall, Chrysanthemum."
- Albert Bigelow Paine

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
- Thomas Gray.

"As we watch the summer days depart
And the painted leaves in silence fall,
And the vines are dead upon the wall;
A dreamy sadness fills each heart,
Our garden seems a dreary place,
No brilliant flowers its borders grace,
Save in a sheltered nook apart,
Where gay beneath the autumn sun
Blooms our own Chrysanthemum. "
- Hattie L. Knapp, Chrysanthemum

"To see the world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wildflower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake.

"O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."
- William Blake.

"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.

"And these memories and associations that our flowers give us are independent of seasons or of age. They come to us as well in autumn and winter, in spring and summer; and as to age, the older we get the more, from the very nature of things, do these memories increase and multiply."
- Canon Ellacombe, In a Gloucestershire Garden, 1895.

"Flowers seem intended for a solace of ordinary humanity."
- John Ruskin.

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"The Kingdom of Flowering Plants holds a special compassion for human travail. Because of this, the essences of flowers support us with a special compassion through our earthbound transformation. Flower essences contain the vibratory qualities of the flowers, and are made by infusing the flower into spring water under sun or moon light."
- Flowers of the Soul.

"Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.
Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?"
- Thomas Hardy, The Last Chrysanthemum

"The daffodil is our doorside queen;
She pushes upward the sword already,
To spot with sunshine the early green."
- Bryant, An Invitation to the Country

"In the 1600's, a language of flowers developed in Constantinople and in the poetry of Persia. Charles II introduced the Persian poetry to Europe, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought the flower language from Turkey to England in 1716. It spread to France and became a handbook of 800 floral messages known as the Book Le Language des Fleurs. Lovers exchanged messages as they gave each other selected flowers or bouquets. A full red rose meant beauty. Red and white mean unity. Crocus said "abuse not", while a white rosebud warns that one is too young for love. Yellow roses were for jealousy, yellow iris for passion, filbert for reconciliation and ivy for marriage."
- Valentine's Day Love Traditions.