Hothouse Quotes & Sayings

I'd seen how the top-performing girls at Laurinda were cultivated like hothouse strawberries - bright and lush. Out in the real world, they would bruise. I wanted to see how the Cabinet would cope in two years' time, when they would be in the same classes as my most driven and hard-working Christ Our Saviour friends, and the most tenacious and gifted public school students, the hardy banksias and olive trees and root vegetables that would last all through winter. — Alice Pung

Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political and cultural idea. — Adolf Hitler

In that hothouse atmosphere, criminal records bloomed like orchids all around us. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

The problem with the literary hothouse of New York City is that people spend so much time looking in the mirror. They go to parties with people who are just like them, and they write novels about people who are just like them. It's limiting. — Anne Fadiman

You plowed him with a pitchfork?"
"I sure did. My daddy didn't raise no hothouse flower, you know."
Gideon had a feeling he would have liked her daddy. — Karen Witemeyer

She once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear. — Katie Roiphe

Unspoiled by education, frank and unsuspecting as young an8imals, they came up to school from their meadows, their games, and their dreams. The simple law of life was alone valid for them; the most vital, the most forceful among them was leader; the rest followed him. But little by little, with the weekly portions of tuition, another, artificial set of values was foisted upon them: he who knew his lesson best was termed excellent and ranked foremost, and the rest must emulate him. Little wonder, indeed, if the more vital of them resist it! But they have to knuckle under, for the ideal of the school is the good scholar.
But what an ideal! What ever came of the good scholars in the world?
In the hothouse of the school they do enjoy a short semblance of life, but only the more surely to sink back afterward into mediocrity and insignificance. The world has been bettered only by the bad scholars. — Erich Maria Remarque

I have decided that if analysis is a hothouse, a hastening of wisdom and growth, nevertheless the life experience must be actually lived out and through, completely, in spite of it; everything that is lived out in the imagination is poison. — Anais Nin

Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse. — Henry Mintzberg

My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither. — Justina Chen

Anderson takes a shuddering breath, forcing away the memories. She is the opposite of the invasive plagues he fights every day. A hothouse flower, dropped into a world too harsh for her delicate heritage. It seems unlikely that she will survive for long. Not in this climate. Not with these people. Perhaps it was that vulnerability that moved him, her pretended strength when she had nothing at all. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The levelling of the European man is the great process which cannot be obstructed; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, distance, order of rank, is therefore imperative - not the necessity of retarding this process. This homogenizing species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it lies in serving a higher and sovereign race which stands upon the former and can raise itself this task only by doing this. Not merely a race of masters whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race that may grant itself every great luxury - strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative, rich enough to have no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a hothouse for rare and exceptional plants. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests. Like frenzied, desperate birds, they overdecorated everything; fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won homes; canned, jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the cupboards and shelves; they painted, picked, and poked at every corner of their houses. And these houses loomed like hothouse sunflowers among the rows of weeds that were the rented houses. — Toni Morrison

The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind.
However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity.
Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss — Brian W. Aldiss

Beautiful things should not be kept behind glass, they should be used. Just as beautiful women should live fully and not let herself turn into a hothouse flower, pampered and useless. — Lisa Cach

A little later Anastasia was sitting before her bedroom fire writing. It has a magic of its own - the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once or twice a year. How the coals glow between the bars, how the red light shimmers on the black-lead bricks, how the posset steams upon the hob! Milk or tea, cocoa or coffee, poor commonplace liquids, are they not transmuted in the alembic of a bedroom fire, till they become nepenthe for a heartache or a philtre for romance? Ah, the romance of it, when youth forestalls to-morrow's conquest, when middle life forgets that yesterday is past for ever, when even querulous old age thinks it may still have its "honour and its toil"! — John Meade Falkner

Right and left; the hothouse and the street. The Right can only live and work hermetically, in the hothouse of the past, while outside the Left prosecute their affairs in the streets manipulated by mob violence. And cannot live but in the dreamscape of the future. — Thomas Pynchon

Not a hothouse flower, this daughter of Leoch, despite her surroundings. — Diana Gabaldon

No wreaths please - especially no hothouse flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes - a few books perhaps. — William Carlos Williams

After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu. — Jerry Saltz

All our bright minds," Feynman said sardonically, "and we can't figure how to stop the enemy from dumping dirt on us." Freeman said with delicate precision, "We are hothouse flowers, really. Not made for the blunt edge of war." Nods — Gregory Benford

Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine. — Anthony Trollope

Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception. — Dorothy Dunnett

He was a son of a bitch, too. He played ball in school, and had those fancy-cut muscles the young men have these days. They look real nice, but to me they're like flowers grown in a hothouse that would die if you planted them out in the real world. — Jordan Harper

I don't believe you know anything about a man like me or a country like this. It takes rough men, Miss Fair, to tame a rough country; rough men, but good men. Your father is in that class. As for you, I don't think you'd measure up, and you'll do well to leave it. You're a hothouse flower, very soft, very appealing and very useless ... In the world you are going to, men want pretty useless women. They want toys for their lighte moments, and we have those women out here, too, only we have another name for them. We want women who can make a home, and if need be, handle a rifle. — Louis L'Amour

A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure. — Gunter Grass

Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them. — Patrick Rothfuss

Genius is a native to the soil where it grows - is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun; and is not a hothouse plant or an exotic — William Hazlitt

If there is any political moral to be found in this world," Stencil once wrote in his journal, "it is that we carry on the business of this century with an intolerable double vision. Right and Left; the hothouse and the street. The Right can only live and work hermetically, in the hothouses of the past, while outside the Left prosecute their affairs in the streets by manipulated mob violence. And cannot live but in the dreamscape of the future.
"What of the real present, the men-of-no-politics, the once-respectable Golden Mean? Obsolete; in any case, lost sight of. In a West of such extremes we can expect, at the very least, a highly 'alienated' populace within not many more years. — Thomas Pynchon

Helen lifted the lid, her eyes widening as she discovered a treasure trove of caramels, jelly creams, candied fruit, toffees and marshmallow drops, all wrapped in twists of waxed paper. Her wondering gaze traveled to the nearby mountain of accumulating delicacies... smoked Wiltshire ham and collar bacon, a box of dry-cured salmon, pots of imported Danish butter, tinned sweetbreads, and a sack of fat glossed dates. There was a basket of hothouse fruits, wheels of Brie in papery white rinds, cunning little cheeses wrapped in netting jars of rich fig paste, pickled quail eggs, bottles of jewel-colored fruit liqueur meant to be sipped from tiny glasses, and a gold-colored tin of cocoa essence. — Lisa Kleypas

You're a hothouse flower," I tell her. "You can't grow under natural conditions. You need adventure. And security and love in order to stay alive. — Krista Ritchie

Faith is not a hothouse plant that must be shielded from wind and rain, so delicate that it has to be protected, but it's like the sturdy oak which becomes stronger with every wind that blows upon it. An easy time weakens faith, while strong trials strengthen it. — Elizabeth George

Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the 'Cause' is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. — C.S. Lewis

E is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Perhaps the only reason they survived, Stencil reasoned, was that they were not alone. God knew how many more there were with a hothouse sense of time, no knowledge of life, and at the mercy of Fortune. — Thomas Pynchon

For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world. — John Berendt

I feel stuffy, as if there were not enough air to breathe - hot, and uneasy. Two months of no exercise have made me weak and plegmatic mentally and physically. On the short walk from here to the libe I drink the cold pure night air and the clear unbelievably delicate crescent-moonlight with a greedy reverence. Days are bizarre collections of hothouse languidities, mystical and poignant sensuous quotations (white thy fambles, red thy gan, and thy quarrons dainty is ... " Dark, liquid loveliness of words half dimly understood.) — Sylvia Plath

Sometimes the feeling would sneak up on me over a number of days: friendliness, tenderness, slowly growing in the hothouse of my introspection, swelling into something more beautiful and dangerous: a kind of euphoric enchantment. Sadly, this state never lasted more than a couple of days. Because pretty soon, hope-that sly, insinuating monster-would creep into my heart. — Sam Taylor

Miss Drew, entering her classroom, was aghast to see instead of the usual small array of buttonholes on her desk, a mass of already withering hothouse flowers completely covering her desk and chair. William was a boy who never did things by halves. — David Miller

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came. — Douglas Woolf

English Bohemianism is a curiously unluscious fruit ... Inside this hothouse, huge lascivious orchids slide sensuously up the sweating windows, passion-flowers cross-pollinate in wild heliotrope abandon, lotuses writhe with poppies in the sweet warm beds, kumquats ripen, open and plop flatly to the floor-and outside, in a neat, trimly-hoed kitchen-garden, English bohemians sit in cold orderly rows, like carrots. — Alan Coren

Detroit is a metaphor for America, for America's challenges and America's opportunities. It is a hothouse for new innovation, for ingenuity and risk taking. That doesn't happen in a lot of American cities. We need to be in Detroit because of that. — Darren Walker

He ought to have conceded that she was a flower not destined to open, a hothouse creation, no less beautiful, no less woth having, He should have admired her, praised her and, at the close of day, let her be. — Michel Faber

Whatever other qualities Jews may posses, likable or the reverse, no one who knows them well can deny that they are personally interesting. By that I mean, specially alive, alert, quick at comprehending people or events and at making pungent or witty comments on them ... One might at times find the rather hothouse family atmosphere, with it intensities and frictions, somewhat trying, but one could be sure of never being bored. — Ernest Jones

There was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine ... 'This is my frugal breakfast ... Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret.' — Charles Dickens

Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace towards him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand. — Margaret Atwood

America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago. — William R. Forstchen

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world. — Phillip Lopate

A hothouse flower trained to bloom out of season and in the wrong climate. I do not belong. — Karen Levy

She was a French rose growing wild amid the hothouse flowers of London. — Sabrina Jeffries

Around Sun Moon, blossoms opened, the petals spreading wide to reveal hidden pollen pots. Commander Ga dripped with sweat, and in his honor, groping stamens emanated their scent in clouds of sweet spoor that coated our lovers' bodies with the sticky seed of socialism. Sun Moon offered her Juche to him, and he gave her all he had of Songun policy. At length, in depth, their spirited exchange culminated in a mutual exclaim of Party understanding. Suddenly, all the plants in the hothouse shuddered and dropped their blossoms, leaving a blanket upon which Sun Moon could recline as a field of butterflies ticklishly alighted upon her innocent skin. — Anonymous

Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your man of action and bashes in the hothouse windows. — Gunter Grass

It's funny, I do try to maintain health. I started doing Bikram yoga which is that hothouse yoga, the 105 degrees yoga for 90 minutes. It's great, you purge out all the sweat and you're drinking water. — Bryan Cranston

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. The potion is the sum of one's whole existence. Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and color in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.
The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.
No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.
But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom ... — Anais Nin