Quotes & Sayings About Life As A Flower

I will become a firefly and even in the day my glow will be seen in spite of the sun. Let others be as butterflies who preen their wings yet depend on the charity of a flower for life. — Og Mandino

The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud
the obstacles of life and its suffering ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. — Goldie Hawn

I think there is in the heart of a man a place made for wonder. It sleeps inside, awaiting fulfillment. All one's life, one gathers treasures to fill it. Sometimes they are tiny glistening jewels: a flower blooming in the shelter of a fallen tree, the arch of a small child's brow combined with the curve of her cheek. Sometimes, however, a trove falls into your hands all at once, as if some greedy pirate's chest spilled before an unsuspecting beholder. Such were the dragons on the wing. — Robin Hobb

Life is very tough and fragile at the same time, it never backs down or surrenders, but will break open to reveal its beauty and ugliness. As a evening primrose that blooms in the flooding moonlight, just before being trampled upon underfoot by the four-legged frost of the night. — Anthony Liccione

How the stars shone.
How sweet the earth smelled.
The orchard gate creaked,
and a footstep pressed on the sand.
And she entered, fragrant as a flower, and fell into my arms.
Oh, sweet kisses, lingering caresses.
Slowly, trembling, I gazed upon her beauty.
Now my dream of true love is lost forever.
My last hour has flown, and I die, hopeless, and never have I loved life more. — Giacomo Puccini

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. — D.H. Lawrence

You may wear your virtues as a crown,
As you walk through life serenely,
And grace your simple rustic gown
With a beauty more than queenly.
Though only one for you shall care,
One only speak your praises;
And you never wear in your shining hair,
A richer flower than daisies. — Phoebe Cary

Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of nature and the vast negativity that has accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you some across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the humans mind and its insanity. — Eckhart Tolle

A human being is like a seed. Either you can keep it as it is, or you can make it grow into a wonderful tree with flowers and fruits. — Jaggi Vasudev

There is a beginning, middle and end to every woman's life. But once a woman arrives at what she thinks might be her end, all she must do is reach deep down into her innermost depths and there she will find a new beginning. A woman is hardy as a perennial flower and deep as the sea." --Whisper from the Ocean — Christine Lemmon

I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that ourlife should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower. — Henry David Thoreau

An intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower. In addition to study and reflections, life itself serves as a source. — Carl Von Clausewitz

The Jetavana Temple bells
ring the passing of all things.
Twinned sala trees, white in full flower,
declare the great man's certain fall.
The arrogant do not long endure:
They are like a dream one night in spring.
The bold and brave perish in the end:
They are as dust before the wind. — Royall Tyler

As a flower expresses thanks with her beauty and fragrance for her magnificent life, let us express our gratitude to every friend with our service and love and to the Earth for her hospitality and care. Let us be thankful and let us express the deepest gratitude for our magnificent life. No matter where you are, I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving filled with profound joy and endless peace. — Debasish Mridha

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

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

She attended the French performance, but the play's content now had a connection to her life. She read a book and the book invariably had lines with sparks from her mind, the fire of her emotions flickered here and there, and words spoken the night before were written down, as if the author had overheard how her heart beat.
The forest held the same trees, but their sound had taken on special meaning; she had established a vibrant consonance with them. The birds did not simply twitter and chirp but were saying something to each other. Everything around her spoke and responded to her mood; a flower would blossom and she seemed to hear its breathing.
pp. 256-257 — Ivan Goncharov

The charities of life are scattered everywhere, enameling the vales of human beings as the flowers paint the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of refinement, but a natural instinct. — George Bancroft

It's the simple truth that mortal men cannot understand why the gods shape events as they do. Why some men and women are cut off in fullest flower, while others live to dwindle into shadows of themselves. Why virtue must sometimes be trampled and evil flourish amidst the beauty of a country garden. Why chance, sheer random chance, plays such an overwhelming role in the life lines and fate lines of men. — Guy Gavriel Kay

I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. I have heard them called bold and flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself, only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can and not be afraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

What the flower vendor interpreted as 'pretty nasty'
was only the intensity that comes to those who, better late than never, have found a
purpose in life and are pursuing it to make up for lost time. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Don't ever believe that you are going to be peaceful-life is not like that. When you are changing all the time, you've got to continue to keep adjusting to change, which means that you are going to be constantly facing new obstacles. That's the joy of living. And once you are involved in the process of becoming, there is no stopping. You're doomed! You're gone! But what a fantastic journey! Every day is new. Every flower is new. Every face is new. Everything in the world is new, every morning of your life. Stop seeing it as a drag! — Leo Buscaglia

If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your life will dissipate into the formation of a useless bark; all your actions will be as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears to water you, but those from your own eyes, to nourish you, no heart but your own. — Alfred De Musset

When we fail to tend to the fragilities of a flower as we become distracted by the noise of our minds, our plant is essentially dying. The quintessence of dying in the sense that we are failing to be mindful of the present moment, for life is the paradox of both living and dying concurrently. Just as we are living each moment, we are dying with every moment, and the essence of living is within each breath that ultimately comprises life as a whole. — Forrest Curran

The attempt made in recent decades by secularist thinkers to disengage the moral principles of western civilization from their scripturally based religious context, in the assurance that they could live a life of their own as "humanistic" ethics, has resulted in our "cut flower culture." Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now-severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice, and personal dignity - the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality. — Will Herberg

As from a large heap of flowers many garlands and wreaths are made, so by a mortal in this life there is much good work to be done. — Gautama Buddha

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,
a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters") — Vladimir Nabokov

CELL

Now look objectively. You have to
admit the cancer cell is beautiful.
If it were a flower, you'd say, How pretty,
with its mauve centre and pink petals

of if a cover for a pulpy thirties
sci-fi magazine. How striking:
as an alien, a success,
all purple eye and jelly tentacles
and spines, or are they gills,
creeping around on granular Martian
dirt red as the inside of the body,

while its tender walls
expand and burst, its spores
scatter elsewhere, take root, like money,
drifting like a fiction or
miasma in and out of people's
brains, digging themselves
industriously in. The lab technician

says, It has forgotten
how to die. But why remember? All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. to take
more. to eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing those things forever. Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror. — Margaret Atwood

Fortunate is the person who can succeed in extracting honey from such a flower as this life, whose root and every petal is bitterness. — Lynn Cullen

My grandmother lived in a universe filled with life. It was impossible for her to conceive of any creature - even the smallest insect, let alone a human being - as insignificant. In every leaf, flower, animal, and star she saw an expression of a compassionate universe, whose laws were not competition and survival of the fittest but cooperation, artistry and thrift ... — Eknath Easwaran

Such a slender moon, going up and up, Waxing so fast from night to night, And swelling like an orange flower-bud, bright, Fated, methought, to round as to a golden cup, And hold to my two lips life's best of wine. — Jean Ingelow

May 27, 1941
Sunday we encountered specimens of the rarely appearing yellow lady's slipper. This orchis is fragilely beautiful. One tends to think of it almost as a phenomenon, without any roots or place in the natural world. And yet it, too, has had its tough old ancestors which have eluded fires and drought and freezes to pass on in this lovely form the boon of existence. If a plant so delicately lovely can at the same time be so toughly persistent and resistant to all natural enemies, can we doubt that hopes for a better an more rational world may not also withstand all assaults, be bequeathed from generation to generation, and come ultimately to flower?
President Roosevelt says he has not lost faith in democracy; nor have I lost faith in the transcendent potentialities of LIFE itself. One has but to look about him to become almost wildly imbued with something of the massive, surging vitality of the earth. — Harvey Broome

Love as a flower loves the morning sun.
Love with kindness, expect no return. — Debasish Mridha

A DESCRIPTION OF HAPPINESS IN KOBENHAVN
All this windless day snow fell
into the King's Garden
where I walked, perfecting and growing old,
abandoning one by one everybody:
randomly in love with the paradise
furnace of my mind. Now I sit in the dark,
dreaming of a marble sun
and its strictness. This
is to tell you I am not coming back.
To tell you instead of my private life
among people who must wrestle their hearts
in order to feel anything, as though it were
unnatural. What I master by day
still lapses in the night. But I go on
with the cargo cult, blindly feeling the snow
come down, learning to flower by tightening. — Jack Gilbert

The great packing machine ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing, not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life. — Upton Sinclair

Lily, I can honestly tell you that i have never in my long life come across a creature as beguilinig as you. You are as fresh and as lovely as a budding flower by the dew of a golden morning. I breathe you in and am filled with the taste of sunshine, life, and hope. You are much more than beautiful. You are ... temptation personified. — Colleen Houck

As a flower plucked from a tree gradually droops and shrivels, love that avoids the harsh realities of practical life cannot thrive on its own resources. — Rabindranath Tagore

Happiness supports enthusiasm and empowers creativity and initiative.
Happiness makes you a better person in your private, family, and
work spheres.
Happiness keeps you healthy and lets you stick to your plans.
Cultivate happiness as the most precious flower in your Garden.
- From HAPPY DIVORCE, by Rossana Condoleo
gardenRossana Condoleo — Rossana Condoleo

Diversity of opinion in religious belief and its mode is not incompatible with equal possession of the essentials of pure faith, nor at variance with the divine purpose. If an analogy exists between the growth we observe in the vegetable kingdom and that of the intellectual, we should expect to find the same variety in the expression of human belief that we seek in the development of tree and flower. Every tree is not an oak, nor every flower a rose, but each tree and flower is the expression in form and colour of its own inner life. In the same manner the mind was intended to be free to develop according to its own light, and any attempt to coerce it into a defined groove is an interference with the natural order of things. To condemn those who in matters of religion do not conform to our standards is, therefore, as unreasonable as to find fault with an oak tree because it is not an elm. — John Daniel

...take a page from the life of the little bee. People as a rule think that it gets honey right from the flower. They are mistaken. All it gets is a little sweet water. But it takes that water, retires, adds something to it from itself, and by a process of its own makes it into honey...go to the Bible as the bee to the flower, and 'read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest'. Thus, through a process of his own, he is to bring forth the real spiritual honey... — Hiram Alfred Cody

If the day is done, if birds sing no more, if the wind has flagged tired, then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me, even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk. From the traveller, whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended, whose garment is torn and dustladen, whose strength is exhausted, remove shame and poverty, and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night. — Rabindranath Tagore

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. — Edith Wharton

It is difficult to estimate the influence upon a life of the early formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done, or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature completes every little leaf, even every little rib, its edges and stera, as exactly and perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even the flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever behold it, is made with the same perfection and exactness of form and outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the same completeness of beauty, as though it were intended for royalty in the queen's garden. "Perfection to the finish," is — Orison Swett Marden

I believe that the welfare of each
is bound up in the welfare of all
I believe that life is given us
so we may grow in love,
and I believe that God is in me
as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower
the light in my darkness, the voice in my silence
I believe that only in broken gleams
has the Sun of Truth yet shone upon men — Hellen Keller

And I think of the night-blooming cereus, a plant that looks like a leathery weed most of the year. But for one night each summer its flower opens to reveal silky white petals, which encircle yellow lacelike threads, and another whole flower like a tiny sea anemone within the outer flower. By morning, the flower has shriveled. One night of the year, as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe. — Alan Lightman

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

Maple leaves in autumn do not suddenly transform into stained glass pendants ... in order to satisfy a human longing for beauty. Their scarlet, ochre, and golden colors emerge as chlorophyll production shuts down, in preparation for sacrificing the leaves that are vulnerable to winter cold, and ensuring the survival of the tree. But the tree survives, WHILE our vision is ravished. The peacock's display attracts a hen, AND it nourishes the human eye. The flower's fragrance entices a pollinator, BUT IT ALSO intoxicates the gardener. In that "while," in that "and," in that "but it also," we find the giftedness of life. — Terryl L. Givens

He who knows his soul knows this truth:
" I am beyond everything finite; I I now see that the Spirit, alone in a space with Its ever-new joy, has expressed Itself as the vast body of nature.
I am the stars,
I am the waves,
I am the Life of all,
I am the laughter within all hearts,
I am the smile on the faces of the flowers and in each soul.
I am the Wisdom and Power that sustain all creation. " — Paramahansa Yogananda

As a teen I was totally that dumpy overweight nerdy girl that nobody wants to be in the stories you're told. And now I am a dumpy overweight nerdy adult and life is beautiful like a song. I'm not a flower that bloomed in the mud. Just a girl who stayed steady on the path of determination. — Lauren DeStefano

With every plus there must be a minus; with every tear there must be a smile; and for every skunk there must be a fragrant flower. We live our lives in fear of dying and we overlook the simple truth that living is all we can control. Never too high, never too low will get you stuck in the middle of the road. A sense of equilibrium is needed to see life as it is, not what you would like it to be. — Phil Wohl

Can't you clerk in a store?'
'No.'
'Can't you be a waitress?'
'Would you be anything like you're suggesting to me? Then why, if you're too good, is it all right for me?'
'It's not a question of superiority, Dora. Come on, be a telephone operator and get paid while you work. Or how about ushering in a theater? I have it. You'll get a job in a flower shop. They always do.'
He looked at her so sharply that she knew she must make some answer, and she began to speak as if her words came from another mind, another mouth. 'I am beyond this plane of animal existence. I'm made of different stuff. I lived all this ages ago and I'm through with it for good. — Margery Latimer

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. — Rabindranath Tagore

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 remember a time when my mind wouldn't have been able to shut down, my cases churning so relentlessly that I could barely see the person standing right in front of me. I remember when it had to be me who solved the case, who figured out the riddle. Now I didn't care who did it, how it came about, just as long as it was over. I'm tired of seeing all the rotten things one person does to another person. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to open a flower shop. But this is my dream: One day, I leave my job at my office and it doesn't follow me home and haunt me in my sleep. Another dream: I don't live in my brother's basement apartment. After everything I've seen and done and mused about endlessly, I'm convinced of one thing: There's more to life than this, and sometimes when I picture more, it looks like something so simple, like so much less. — Lisa Lutz

The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers. — Helen Keller

Photographing these flowers has made me see the world differently. It was as if I had lifted a secret veil from a subject I had loved and appreciated my whole life. I offer these photographs with the hope that they will open a new visual or meditative universe for you as well. — Joyce Tenneson

THE TREE OF LIFE

The sun is rising,
And the ether dance at the first sight of his light,
As he ascends like a phoenix from the ashes of morality,
His luminous rays form the magnificent tree of life.
He springs up from the east,
Spreading his long arms like branches,
Over the horizons of milky meadows and open seas,
Extending his wings to embrace all living things.
He walks on water and grazes through fields,
Pouring his butter like honey to feed the Earth.
Towering over all of creation,
He who is the lamp of the universe,
The power source of all life.
And in his truth and light,
Everything becomes aroused
Like a flower,
And everything is given
Sight. — Suzy Kassem

Plant the trees just for beauty,
If flowers bloom or fruits ripen,
Enjoy it as a gift and appreciate nature as a universal giver. — Debasish Mridha

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry ... No, no! — Anton Chekhov

A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating. It doesn't matter what kind: the blooded Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near-transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. It's their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, than release. Like a ghost heart-- a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost as gone to hide.
Jellyfish don't even have hearts, of course-- no heart, no brain, no bone, no blood. But watch them for a while. You will see them beating. — Ali Benjamin

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her. Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called 'Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!' The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett, who stood brown against the view. — E. M. Forster

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. — Christian Nestell Bovee

I rebuke societies that impart to their flowers their cold and rigid demeanour. Flowers should not stand with the stiffness of a soldier on parade but must carry themselves with the relaxedness of a dancer, their arms outstretched above a shaggy mane. Life reveals few sights as distressing as the look of flowers standing mournfully at attention unstirred by the kisses of a million bees. This infection of uncomely reserve is the handiwork of sombre gardeners bred in sombre societies who will not consider their work done till their flowers exude in aspect that stiffness they esteem. They forget that God intended that we mingle with flowers and not merely admire them from afar. But there is a look in a fastidiously manicured garden that makes me keep my distance, a look that draws my eyes but scorns my touch, and that is why I condemn them. — Agona Apell

Life without Love is as a flower without fragrance. — Richard B. Garnett

Dear Woman,
You are a beautiful flower of earth, allow the rain to feed you the same strength as the sun. Don't stop growing through the storms, they are sent to test how solid your soil is not too destroy your roots. — Keysha Jade

See the flower as dying and you will see the flower sadly. Yet see the flower as part of a whole tree that is changing, and will soon bear fruit, and you see the flower's true beauty. When you understand that the blossoming and the falling away of the flower is a sign that the tree is ready to bear fruit, then you understand life. — Neale Donald Walsch

This building disguised as a house of worship, was rather like a hive. A backward hive, for honeybees, at least, have the good sense to worship the female that gifts them all with life. They do not hold their drones in such high esteem. But here, is the hive of hornets, the males flitted flower to flower, pollinating, and stinging and injecting their poison. — Ellen Hopkins

Humans need Jesus Christ as a necessity and not as a luxury. You may be pleased to have flowers, but you must have bread ... Jesus is not a phenomenon, He is bread: Christ is not a curiosity, He is water. As surely as we cannot live without bread, we cannot live truly without Christ: If we know not Christ we are not living, our movement is a mechanical flutter, our pulse is but the stirring of an animal life. — Joseph Parker

His work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! — Virginia Woolf

We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile. — Yukio Mishima

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." ... And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered. — Henry Van Dyke

For as long as there are men and women, some things in life will best be done arm in arm, and strolling in a flower garden is one. — Ivan Doig

A pineapple is a compilation of berries that grow and fuse together. When joined, they create a single fruit. And within each eyelet, contains a location where a flower may grow. I see the Creator of all existence as the crown on a pineapple, and all religions of the world as the spiky eyelets, where each eyelet symbolizes a different religion or race under the same crown. Each garden of faith may have different perspectives of God, yet every garden belongs to the same God. — Suzy Kassem

To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.
"And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years," said Dick. "We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly."
"And what conclusion do you draw from that?" asked Mrs. Crowley.
"Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda. — W. Somerset Maugham

The Learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life. — Charles Willson Peale

At your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life's Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it
as a force, a voice or in whatever form
the greater your chance of fulfilling this Life's Task and achieving mastery. — Robert Greene

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them. — Charles Dickens

A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem. — Andre Maurois

The spirit of a person's life is ever shedding some power, just as a flower is steadily bestowing fragrance upon the air. — Thomas Starr King

That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them. That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the rottenness of their youth - for of flower or blossom such youth has none - the Gospel was NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and unmeaning voices. That of all wrongs, this was the first mighty wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right. And that no Post- Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter Writer for the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be presentable on the Last Great Day as anything towards it. — Charles Dickens

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there. — Marguerite Young

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

The hill is like an old woman, all her human obligations met, who sits at work day after day, in a kind of rapt leisure, at an intricate embroidery. She has time for all things. Because she does not expect ever to be finished, she is endlessly patient with details. She perfects flower and leaf, feather and song, adorning the briefest life in great beauty as though it were meant to last forever. — Wendell Berry

Transitions are a part of life, allowing for perpetual renewal. When you experience the end of one chapter, allow yourself to feel the emotions of loss and rebirth. A bud gives way to a new flower, which surrenders to the fruit, which gives rise to a seed, which yields a new sprout. Even as you ride the roller coaster, embrace the centered internal reference of the ever-present witness. — David Simon

The Bourne Underneath the growing grass, Underneath the living flowers, Deeper than the sound of showers: There we shall not count the hours By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Beauty reckoned of no worth: There a very little girth Can hold round what once the earth Seemed too narrow to contain. — Christina Rossetti

True beauty is a ray
That springs from the sacred depths of the soul,
and illuminates the body, just as life
springs from the kernel of a stone and
gives colour and scent to a flower. — Kahlil Gibran

Mrs. Flanigan made this for you and dropped it off earlier. So pretty, wouldn't you agree?"...
"White roses - the bride's flower," Mrs. Norton said with a lilt in her voice. "For unity, purity, and a love stronger than death." She touched the edge of a blossom. "And, in addition, you have chrysanthemums for fidelity, optimism, joy, and long life, with the color white standing for truth and loyal love."
As if caught in a spell, Grace stared at the flowers, a lump forming in her throat, the words echoing in her mind... Joy, truth, fidelity, a love stronger than death.
Mrs. Flanigan chuckled. "Mrs. Norton, you make the bouquet sound so poetic. I'm afraid I can't take credit for such a romantic arrangement. I chose the only white flowers still blooming in my garden. — Debra Holland

And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife.
Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars."
His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass.
This little girl's grown up by now," she said.
Almost. Not quite.
I wish you all a long and happy life. — Alice Sebold

At age 12 I had an obsession with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and then proceeded to watch all the other Kubrick films I could including a doc called Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures in which it was revealed to me that he started as a photographer ... I got a camera sometime shortly after, but spent many years just photographing flowers in my neighborhood. — Anton Yelchin

I don't mind ... the fun and games of being treated like a fragile flower. But as a physiologist working with the unromantic scientific facts of life, I find it hard to delude myself about feminine frailty. — Estelle Ramey

Pleasure is to a woman what the sun is to the flower: if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates, and destroys. But the duties of domestic life, exercised as they must be in retirement, and calling forth all the sensibilities of the female, are perhaps as necessary to the full development of her charms, as the shade and the shower are to the rose, confirming its beauty, and increasing its fragrance. — Charles Caleb Colton

A child's eyes, those clear, wells of undefiled thought - what on earth can be more beautiful? Full of hope, love and curiosity, they meet your own. In prayer, how earnest; in joy, how sparkling; in sympathy, how tender! The man who never tried the companionship of a little child has carelessly passed by one of the great pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower without plucking it or knowing its value — Caroline Norton

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

You can't take love for granted! You need to be patient. And just as flowers take time to blossom, love will one day blossom in your heart! — Avijeet Das

The drums staggered toward the distant street. Moving away from us, the dancers romped and rolled on the rhythm, their swaying heads like a field of wildflowers weaving back and forth on waves of wind. As the music dwindled to an echo in our minds, the day-to-day and minute-to-minute of slum life slowly reclaimed the lanes. We gave ourselves to our routines, our needs, and our harmless, hopeful scheming. And for a while, a little while, ours was a better world because the hearts and smiles that ruled it were almost as pure and clean as the flower petals fluttering from our hair, and clinging to our faces like still, white tears. — Gregory David Roberts

I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long. — Jorge Luis Borges