Flower Art Quotes & Sayings

When you smell a flower, where is the smell before you smell the flower? Think about that one. — Art Hochberg

I have seen the glories of art and architecture, and mountain and river; I have seen the sunset on the Jungfrau, and the full moon rise over Mont Blanc; but the fairest vision on which these eyes ever looked was the flag of my country in a foreign land. Beautiful as a flower to those who hate it, terrible as a meteor to those who hate it, it is the symbol of the power and glory, and the honor, of fifty million Americans. — George Frisbie Hoar

Perfume is magic. It's mystery. We recreate the smell of a flower. Of wood. Of grass. We capture the essence of life. Liquefy it. We store memories. We make dreams," he told her once. "What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well. — M.J. Rose

Sometimes I defy flower anatomy & other times I try and replicate it intricately! — Minnelli Lucy France

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself. — Daisaku Ikeda

London, thou art the flower of cities all! — William Dunbar

I see a flower. It gives me a sensation of the beautiful. I wish to paint it. And as soon as I wish to paint it I see the whole subject - flower - changed. It is now an art problem to resolve. — Georges Vantongerloo

You have to observe flowers in order to find the right tones for the folds of clothes. — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Do anything but love; or if thou lovest and art a woman, hide thy love from him whom thou dost worship; never let him know how dear he is; flit like a bird before him; lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower; but be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird, when caught and caged, be left to pine neglected and perish in forgetfulness. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

A fit queen for that nest of roses was the human flower that adorned it, for a year of love and luxury had ripened her youthful beauty into a perfect bloom. Graceful by nature, art had little to do for her, and, with a woman's aptitude, she had acquired the polish which society alone can give. Frank and artless as ever, yet less free in speech, less demonstrative in act; full of power and passion, yet still half unconscious of her gifts; beautiful with the beauty that wins the heart as well as satisfies the eye, yet unmarred by vanity or affectation. She now showed fair promise of becoming all that a deep and tender heart, an ardent soul and a gracious nature could make her, once life had tamed and taught her more. — Louisa May Alcott

Archery, fencing, spear fighting, all of the martial arts, tea ceremony, flower arranging ... in all of these, correct breathing, correct balance, and correct stillness help to remake the individual. The basic aim is always the same: by tirelessly practicing a given skill, the student finally sheds the ego with its fears, worldly ambitions, and reliance on objective scrutiny - sheds it so completely that he becomes the instrument of a deeper power, from which mastery falls instinctively, without further effort on his part, like a ripe fruit. — Karlfried Graf Durckheim

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. — Georgia O'Keeffe

As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary; a wild flower by the wayside, tended corn, wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only. — John Ruskin

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves. It is futile to argue as to which leaf, which design of branches, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming. — Bruce Lee

It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art. — Ruth St. Denis

Damascus, is simply an oasis, that is what it is. For four thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. Now we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could not die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the tired and thirsty wayfarer.
"Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of spring, blooming as thine own orange flower, O Damascus, the pearl of the East!". — Mark Twain

Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it. At any rate, praise does not make anything better or worse. This applies even to the popular conception of beauty, as in material things or works of art. So does the truly beautiful need anything beyond itself? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or integrity. Which of these things derives its beauty from praise, or withers under criticism? Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bush? — Marcus Aurelius

From Portrait of a Landscape

I think art only exists when it's being made. It's like a flower. Once picked, it starts to die. — Daniel D. Watkins

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act. — Rabindranath Tagore

A child her wayward pencil drew
On margins of her book;
Garlands of flower, dancing elves,
Bud, butterfly, and brook,
Lessons undone, and plum forgot,
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew t'was Art. — Louisa May Alcott

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art. — Marc Chagall

Diane stood near Jackie. She had first gone to the accident site, but there wasn't much to see. Just some skid barks and an elaborate piece of 3-D chalk art. Then she had a cab take her by a few of Josh's favorite hangouts (the video store, the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, the sand wastes outside of town), but he hadn't been at any of them. He was probably (if he was not injured as well, but she couldn't bear to even think of that) at one of his father's several jobs, doing exactly what Diane didn't want him to do. There would be consequences when Josh came home tonight. There would be a reckoning. — Joseph Fink

Becoming emancipated at 14, my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school, so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company, Flower Films, and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30, I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography, and I want to take an art history class. — Drew Barrymore

In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee. — Hannah Nordhaus

Art is the flower of life and, as seed, it gives back life. — Remy De Gourmont

Life is the leaves which shape and nourish a plant, but art is the flower which embodies its meaning — Charles Rennie Mackintosh

History, we can confidently assert, is useful in the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers, religion and philosophy are useful. Without it - as with these - life would be poorer and meaner; without it we should be denied some of those intellectual and moral experiences which give meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no accident that the study of history has been the solace of many of the noblest minds of every generation. — Henry Steele Commager

You come in the day of destiny,
Barbara, born to the air of Mars:
The greater glory you shall see
And the greater peace, beyond these wars.
In other days within this isle,
As in a temple, men knew peace;
And won the world to peace a while
Till rose the pride of Rome and Greece,
The pride of art, the pride of power,
The cruel empire of the mind:
Withered the light like a summer flower,
And hearts went cold and souls went blind;
And, groping, men took other gifts,
And thought them the best:
But the light lives in the soul that lifts
The quiet love above the rest. — Thomas MacDonagh

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast ... Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting. — Karen Blixen

I created "Bouquets In Fantasia" when I was strictly painting in the genre of "Fantasy Flower Art". — Minnelli Lucy France

The principle of martial arts is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires. — Bruce Lee

Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets
as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her
and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris. — Anne Rice

I believe that we, that this planet, hasn't seen its Golden Age. Everybody says its finished ... art's finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia, I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, I wasn't there with Emperor Han, I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ... if only each generation would realise that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now. — Patti Smith

Each blooming flower breathe an open soul of nature's gratitude. Every blooming friendship is an opening of both heart and mind to touch a unique growth of one's soul. Jolly good friends make you bloom with joy even on a coldest winter as you share your common interests in life, in work, in art, with people and of your passion. Treasure your true friends and feel blessed in your life to have them. — Angelica Hopes

I have mastered many things in my life. Navigating the streets of London, speaking French without an accent, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms ... "
Tessa stared.
"Alas," he went on, "no one has ever actually referred to me as 'the master,' or 'the magister,' either. More's the pity ... — Cassandra Clare

I adore the elegance of botanical realism but I also can't help but dream of my very own neo-surrealistic fantasy flowers, and so I paint and illustrate both; I always find myself between both of those worlds. — Minnelli Lucy France

Just as when we step into a mosque and its high open dome leads our minds up , up , to greater things , so a great carpet seeks to do the same under the feet .Such a carpet directs us to the magnificence of the infinite , veiled , yet never near , closer than the pulse of jugular , the sunburst that explodes at the center of a carpet signals this boundless radiance . Flowers and trees evoke the pleasures of paradise, and there is always a spot at the center of the carpet that brings calm to the heart. A single white lotus flower floats in a turquoise pool , and in this tiniest of details, there it is : a call to the best within , summoning us to the joy of union .in carpets , I now saw not just intricacies of nature and color , not just mastery of space , but a sign of the infinite design . In each pattern lay the work of a weaver of the world, complete and whole ; and in each knot of daily existence lay mine . — Anita Amirrezvani

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. — Paul Cezanne

From the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like those states which I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. — Anne Rice

He never did understand why people admired or even collected art. The greatest human artist could never hope to match what nature did with a single flower. — Peter F. Hamilton

You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again. — Michael Marshall Smith

It is a thought as sweet as heaven to know that in the minds of each of us the may by the fence still blooms in an eternal springtime; that the snowdrop has in our hearts a triple birth, and blooms in three separate minds, faultlessly ... So that if all the flowers and grasses and hollows and hills of the old house were razed and mutilated - as they are now, I suppose - we keep them intact in three minds, each depending on the other to supply it with the delicate minutiae of remembrance. — Eve Langley

Let every Christian be a gardener so that he and she and the whole of creation, which groans in expectation of the Spirit's final harvest, may inherit Paradise. If we Christian's truly treasure the hope that one day we, like Adam and the penitent thief, will walk alongside the One who caused even the dead wood of the Cross to blossom with flowers, then we must also imitate the Master's art and make the desolate earth grow green. — Vigen Guroian

This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden, then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? — Suzy Kassem

Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world. — Jack London

The creative strength is good enough and deep enough to bring itself to flower and to grow in spite of this sickness. — Joanne Greenberg

Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Very few of us understand Honorable Bird, except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing would be written, painted, or composed at all. To say anything beyond this about the creative process is like pulling all the petals off a flower in order to analyze it, and ending up having destroyed the flower. — Madeleine L'Engle

You have two gardens: your own garden and that of your beloved. First, you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening. In each one of us there are flowers and there is also garbage. The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us. If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds. If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds. What you grow is up to you. — Nhat Hanh

My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou are my tomorrow. I am they root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun. — Kahlil Gibran

O virgin mother, daughter of thy Son,
humble beyond all creatures and more exalted;
predestined turning point of God's intention;
Thy merit so ennobled human nature
that its divine Creator did not scorn
to make Himself the creature of His creature.
The Love that was rekindled in Thy womb
sends for the warmth of the eternal peace
within whose ray this flower has come to bloom.
Here to us, thou art the noon and scope
of Love revealed; and among mortal men,
the living fountain of eternal hope. — Dante Alighieri

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat. — Michael Oakeshott

Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I create neo-surreal gardens with my paint brush — Minnelli Lucy France

Thou art but a feeble flower in the garden of the universe, yet thou hath a purpose much greater than thyself. — Raneem Kayyali

In children's art class we sat in a ring of kindergarten chairs and drew three daffodils that had just been picked out of the yard; and while I was drawing, my sharpened yellow pencil and the cup of the yellow daffodil gave off wiffs just alike. That the pencil doing the drawing should give off the same smell of the flower it drew seemed part of the art lesson - as shouldn't it be? Children, like animals use all their sense to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Here and there, it's the same world. Or now and then we'll hear from an artist who's never lost it. — Eudora Welty

In every house there ought to be an art table on which, one by one, things are placed, so that everybody in that house might look at the things very carefully, and see them.'
'What would you put on a table like that?'
'A leaf. A coin. A button. A stone. A small piece of torn newspaper. An apple. An egg. A pebble. A flower. A dead insect. A shoe.'
'Everybody's seen those things.'
'Of course. But nobody looks at them, and that's what art is. To look at familiar things as if they had never before been seen ... A necktie. A pocketknife ... a walnut. — William, Saroyan

Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers. — Claude Monet

One day, the lotus spoke again. "You remember me? The flower that grows through the mud?" I did. I said as much. "Have you ever considered my significance? I'm everywhere - art, religion, nature.... Have you ever wondered why?"

... It spoke, "Nothing touches me. I radiate beauty. You can do the same."

"How?" I asked.

"Easy," it said. "I grow in a pond. I take the water and nutrients I need to grow, and let the rest sink to the bottom. What's in mud, anyway? Water, nutrients, life and a little bit of sludge. Let the sludge go like I do. Then stand tall above the leaves. — Dawn Casey-Rowe

In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade. — Florence King

When an artist paints a flower, she borrows the beauty from nature and adds fragrance from her own heart. — Debasish Mridha

My dream is for my flowers to act as beacons and rallying points across the planet - bringing people together on a global scale and through my art start a global conversation. — Ana Tzarev

You want your art to be hip and seem cool to people, but a great deal of what passes for hip or cool is now highly commercially driven. And some if it is important art. I think 'The Simpsons' is important art. On the other hand, it's also, in my opinion, relentlessly corrosive to the soul and everything is parodied and everything is ridiculous. Maybe I'm old but for my part I can be steeped in about an hour of it and then I have to walk away and look at a flower.
If there's something to be talked about, that thing is this weird conflict between what my girlfriend calls the 'inner sap,' the part of us that can really wholeheartedly weep at stuff and the part of us that has to live in a world of smart, jaded, sophisticated people and wants very much to be taken seriously by those people. — David Foster Wallace

Reflection is time sensitive; and with the realization that the 'present' and 'future' can be altered, it is also purposeful, for we can set goals to grow into a graceful work of art. Reflection is deliberate and purposeful. It is our past that provides us the wisdom and experience when to bloom and show everyone I am a beautiful flower. — Patricia H. Graham

I come from all places and to all places I go: I am art among the arts and mountain among mountains. I know the strange names of flowers and herbs and of fatal deceptions and magnificent griefs. In night's darkness I've seen raining down on my head pure flames, flashing rays of beauty divine. — Jose Marti

A garden is the place millions of people go to touch the earth, to smell flowers - to use some of that fabled human brain power in the cause of better participating with natural processes in the place they call home. It serves as an art project, an organic produce market, a spiritual practice, a pharmacy. It offers ongoing lessons in ecology, biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology. Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time. It bestows on its practitioners a genuine sense of admiration for the plants, the soil, the sun, the water. — Jim Nollman

It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails. — Janet Fitch

Colour 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

Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. — George MacDonald

What art thou, life, that we, must court thy stay?
A breath one single gasp must puff away!
A short-lived flower, that with the day must fade!
A fleeting vapor, and an empty shade!
A stream that silently but swiftly glides
To meet eternity's immeasured tides!
A being, lost alike by pain or joy?
A fly can kill it, or a worm destroy!
Impair'd by labor, and by ease undone,
Commenced in tears, and ended in a groan. — Alexander Brome

Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word "art". If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Art is the flower ... life the green leaf. — Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Feelings aroused by the touch of someone's hand, the sound of music, the smell of a flower, a beautiful sunset, a work of art, love, laughter, hope and faith - all work on both the unconscious and the conscious aspects of the self, and they have physiological consequences as well. — Bernie Siegel

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If you find yourself pulled beyond all practicality toward doing something
writing poetry, building a business, restoring old cars, planting a secret garden; if at four in the morning the right word comes to you, the perfect flower to plant in that particular spot
you are playing your invisible instrument. — Joan Oliver Goldsmith

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. — Oscar Wilde

The little boy went first day of school He got some crayons and started to draw He put colors all over the paper For colors was what he saw And the teacher said.. "What you doin' young man?" "I'm paintin' flowers" he said She said ... "It's not the time for art young man And anyway flowers are green and red There's a time for everything young man And a way it should be done You've got to show concern for everyone else For you're not the only one. — Harry Chapin

Forge your iron; shape it by force,
not into a flower you already know
but into what can also be a flower
if you think it is and it is so. — Joao Cabral De Melo Neto

True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety ... — Marcel Proust

Act of giving something to others is an art of flowering your heart. — Vinayak

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. — Chip Ingram

Walk in nature. Take the time to be still. Practicing arts, arranging flowers, doing some drawing, working on a computer, brings a sense of stillness into your life. — Frederick Lenz

Rare and powerful harmonies exist,
Shaping both scent and contour in a flower.
Thus brilliance lies unseen by us until,
Beneath the chisel, it blazes in the diamond.
And thus do images of fleeting vision,
Drifting above like cloud-forms in the sky,
Once turned to stone live on from age to age,
Held always in a faultless, polished phrase.
("A Sonnet To Form") — Valery Bryusov

All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty. — Andre Bazin

No flower of art ever fully blossomed save it was nourished by tears of agony. — Isadora Duncan

What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Gurl,if you were a flower I will plant you in heart,watering you with my blood and cover you with my body. — Knight Mayor

Mankind could point with pride to this fine flower of the human spirit--if it were not for one thing: namely that God is God and grace is grace. At this point begins the destruction of our illusions and of our cultural enthusiasm, the great destruction which God himself effects, and which the ancient myth of the tower of Babel typifies. 'And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' Our way to the eternal is interrupted and we are plunged back into the depths from which we came, with out philosophy and art, our morality and religion. For another way now opens, the way of God to man, the way of revelation and grace, the way of Christ, the way of justification by faith alone. 'My ways are not your ways,' that is the answer now. It is not we who go to God, but God who comes to us. It is not religion that sets us right with God, for God alone can do this; it is his action on which we must depend. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Girl of the Period, sauntering before one down Broadway, is one panorama of awful surprises from top to toe. Her clothes characterize her. She never characterizes her clothes. She is upholstered, not ornamented. She is bundled, not draped. She is puckered, not folded. She struts, she does not sweep. She has not one of the attributes of nature nor of proper art. She neither soothes the eye like a flower, nor pleases it like a picture. She wearies it like a kaleidoscope. She is a meaningless dazzle of broken effects. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The Beats were tremendously significant, but chiefly in the way that they provided a preview in the 1950s of the cultural, intellectual, and moral disasters that would fully flower in the late 1960s. The ideas of the Beats, their sensibility, contained in ovo all the characteristics we think of as defining the cultural revolution of the Sixties and Seventies. The adolescent longing for liberation from conventional manners and intellectual standards; the polymorphous sexuality; the narcissism; the destructive absorption in drugs; the undercurrent of criminality; the irrationalism; the naive political radicalism and reflexive anti-Americanism; the adulation of pop music as a kind of spiritual weapon; the Romantic elevation of art as an alternative to rather than as an illumination of normal reality; the pseudo-spirituality, especially the spurious infatuation with Eastern religions: in all this and more the Beats provided a vivid glimpse of what was to come. — Roger Kimball

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. — Oscar Wilde

Creativity is a fragile, delicate flower,
which must be cautiously cared for
and protected,
from the harsh elements
of human weather. — ELLE NICOLAI

I've mastered many thing's in my life. Navigating the streets of London, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms ... "
Tessa stared.
"Alas," he went on, "no one has ever actually referred to me as 'the master' or 'the magister', either. More's the pity ... "
"Are you highly intoxicated at the moment? — Cassandra Clare

Life is not only full of sound and fury. It also has butterflies, flowers, art. — Claude Simon

Rose! Thou art the sweetest flower that ever drank the amber shower:
Even the Gods, who walk the sky, are amourous of thy scented sigh. — Thomas More