Quotes & Sayings About Lilies

So let us not worry, and look instead as it has been taught us to do, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, keeping complete faith in Our Father's goodness. — Franz Liszt

Her exact words were: Your brother is growing in his gift of the in-between, but he doesn't know which way to walk the line. The Light he found will lead him; its wings sit beneath the heart. But he must touch the violets and lilies to find surrender, to find his hidden blood. Damn riddles. — Rachel A. Marks

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. — Anna Sewell

The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies. — Daniel Quinn

Foolish wise folk sneer at you; foolish wise folk would pull up the useless lilies, the needless roses, from the garden, would plant in their places only serviceable wholesome cabbage. But the Gardener knowing better, plants the silly short-lived flowers; foolish wise folk, asking for what purpose. — Jerome K. Jerome

It was too sweet a moment to ruin by speaking mere words. Happiness was the bright blue moon, beaming amidst the bright stars of smiles that enveloped their countenances. — Sonali Dabade

The lily is all in white, like a saint, And so is no mate for me. — Thomas Hood

And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers come back, abandoning the expedition; the specimens, the lilies of ambition still spring in their climate, still unpicked; but time, time is all I lacked to find them, as the great collectors before me. — Gavin Douglas

Ah, Iokanaan, Iokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among men! All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Iokanaan? — Oscar Wilde

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world.
To all of them the logical structure is common.
(Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one.) — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And there you are
on the shore,
fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them to an idea
some news of your own life.
But the lilies
are slippery and wild - they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest
spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you. — Mary Oliver

The new mythology of love was that it bent to the fashion of the day, obligated to take the shape of doves, lilies, jewels. This is a lie. Love is sometimes as passionate as war. — Brenna Yovanoff

I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change. A powerful change. And I have found that while we are emerging, changing into something glorious; it is actually us becoming who we really are. A water lily is born underneath the water, inside the soil at the bottom of the river or lake. And the water lily has always been a water lily for that whole time that it was sprouting out of the wet soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching and grasping for the surface; where it then buds and blooms on the outside in the sunshine. It doesn't bud and bloom on the surface and then try to reach down below into the soil. — C. JoyBell C.

The breath of dying lilies haunted the twilight air. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

For Monet, on this occasion, water lilies were the measure of water lilies; and so he painted them. — Aldous Huxley

People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart. — Barbara Brown Taylor

There is no evolving, only unfolding. The lily is in the bit of dust which is its beginning, lily and nothing but lily: and the lily in blossom is a ne plus ultra: there is no evolving beyond. — D.H. Lawrence

Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds ofjasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body's element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space. — Khalil Gibran

What's the point of fighting the dollars
when all you need is a warm bed?
When the dog barks you let him in.
All we need is someone to let us in.
And one other thing:
to consider the lilies in the field. — Anne Sexton

In fact, amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve, did anyone notice that they didn't have a penis among them? I think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow has his pants destuffed, you don't see a flying monkey waving an errant straw Johnson around anywhere, do
I think I know what song I'd be singing: Oh, I would while away the hours, Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song, I'd be gilding all the lilies as I waved about my willie If I only had a schlong. — Christopher Moore

Each October I walk into the woods
looking for bones: rabbit skulls,
a grackle spine, the pelvis of a deer
with the blood bleached out. What died
in the lush of roses and mint
shines out from the tangle of twigs
that bind it to the place
of its last leaping. The living lack
that kind of clarity. In late April,
when the water spreads out and out
till everything is lilies and seepage,
there is only the mystery of tracks,
a rustle receding in the many reeds.
And so the bones accumulate
across my windowsill: the flightless
wings and exaggerated grins,
the silent unmoving reminders
of where the glories of April lead. — Charles Rafferty

He was in a beastly hole. But decency demanded that he shouldn't act in panic. He had a mechanical, normal panic that made him divest himself of money. Gentlemen don't earn money. Gentlemen, as a matter of fact, don't do anything. They exist. Perfuming the air like Madonna lilies. Money comes into them as air through petals and foliage. Thus the world is made better and brighter. And, of course, thus political life can be kept clean! ... So you can't make money. — Ford Madox Ford

The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily. — Samuel Rutherford

My wife Ann and I had been digging during the day, transplanting lilies from the front of this abandoned farmhouse back down the road to where we live. We finished. She was tired and laid in the grass. I took a picture. The house is now gone. The walnut trees have been bulldozed and burned. I saw this picture the other day for the first time in years and realized how photographing life within a hundred yards of my front porch had helped me focus on everything I cared about. — Larry Towell

I like when I use music in film that it isn't just gilding the lily and it isn't telling you how to feel. It's giving you something, some other information that you cannot otherwise get in the scene. — Fred Schepisi

The only Commandment I ever obeyed - 'Consider the Lilies. — Emily Dickinson

By cool Siloam's shady rill How sweet the lily grows! — Reginald Heber

To The Lilies among Thistles, Just like a lily, a beautiful life does not just happen overnight. It is built daily through informed choices, commitment, faith and prayer. The journey towards becoming A Proverbs 31 Lady cannot therefore be taken lightly. It is a difficult, challenging journey filled with both laughter and tears, but a fulfilling one as you will soon find out. If you commit to becoming this woman just one day at a time, it will change not just your relationships but also your whole life.Consider it as a challenge, from one virtuous woman to the other. — Mary Maina

Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other. — Lauren DeStefano

If there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven or
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
and the whole garden will bow) — E. E. Cummings

For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. — Edgar Allan Poe

We always look for Christ amid magnificence. But ... Christ has a history of showing up amide the unlovely. Born in a dirty stall. Crowned with thorns. Died gasping on a shameful cross atop a jagged rise.
We don't need to be beautiful for Christ to take us in. He is equally at home when we're broken-down and dirty. It's like George Herbert wrote:
'And here in dust and dirt, O here,
The lilies of God's love appear.'
We think magnificence is in short supply, that dust and dirt choke out the lilies. But that's not true and never was. Lilies may root in dirt, but they reach for heaven - and in the reaching, reveal their magnificence.
- chapter 24 — Philip Gulley

I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley. — Francesca Lia Block

And we drove towards the widening dawn, that now streaked half the sky with a wintry bouquet of pink of roses, orange of tiger-lilies, as if my husband had ordered me a sky from a florist. The day broke around me like a cool dream. — Angela Carter

We blended and look to what it has brought us.
I planted lilies on your grave. The rain is already splattering them with dripping dew.
May they last another hundred years, Gerard.
A hundred years of lilies. — Carmen Dominique Taxer

Where Cezanne captured and intensified shards of the eternal (every pear far more sharply defined than it could be in life), Monet portrayed the changeability and flux of every moment. 'The Water Lilies' give you a jittery, amorphous sense of a world seen at the speed of light. — Jerry Saltz

The torture-wheel shall serve him even as these horses from Hell have served my blood-red lilies of Sotar and my vein-colored irises of Naat and my orchids from Uccastrog which were purple as the bruises of love. — Clark Ashton Smith

Let us make our way through these low valleys of the humble and little virtues. We shall see in them the roses amid the thorns, charity that shows its beauty among interior and exterior afflictions, the lilies of purity. — Francis De Sales

Spread over what must have been at least a hectare or two was the most beautiful garden he had ever seen.
There was an entire miniature forest of cedar, cypress, and other sweet-smelling pines that couldn't normally live in the hot and dry Agrabah. There were formal rows of roses and other delicately petaled flowers. There was a garden just of mountain plants. There was a pool filled with flowering white lilies and their pads, and pink lotuses taller than most men. There was a fountain as big as a house and shaped like an egg. There was a delicate white aviary that looked like a giant's birdcage. Strangely, there were no birds in it.
And everywhere, entwined around every tiny building and every balustrade and every topiary ball, was jasmine. White jasmine, pink jasmine, yellow jasmine, night-flowering jasmine... the smell was heady enough to make Aladdin feel a little drunk.
Jasmine.
This was her garden. — Liz Braswell

her. "How do you always know that stuff?" she asked. "Are you kidding? Everyone knows that stuff." He went back to the kitchen to start cleaning up. Meri crossed to the lilies. Bending over them, — Sue Miller

Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your...grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal.' To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god. — C.S. Lewis

Hatred had invaded her entire being; every cell in her body had hatred in it. She wondered if everyone could smell it on her. It smelled like death and coffee, like lilies and dirt, and it permeated her. — R.L. Griffin

Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures. — Gregory Maguire

The only difference between lilies and turds is whatever difference humans have agreed upon; and I don't always agree. — George Carlin

After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world. I mean disassociated. Take a top hat. You think you see it as it really is. But you don't because you associate it with other things and ideas.If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you'd be frightened, or you'd laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad. Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clear-headed and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust.The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies and roses, sprang up, and made a garden in the cafe. "Don't you see them?" I said to him. "Mais non, monsieur, il n'y a rien. — Oscar Wilde

I was dancing with an immortal august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamy gesture seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkness that is between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathed upon the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted over us and round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and ages seemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our robes and in her heavy hair.
Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that her lilies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their places, and understood with a great horror that I danced with one who was more or less than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me. — W.B.Yeats

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises. — William Wordsworth

And the stately lilies stand Fair in the silvery light, Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer; Their pure breath sanctifies the air, As its fragrance fills the night. — Julia Caroline Dorr

Until that wretched yesterday - except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same presence - all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered. But now - would Dorothea meet him in that world again? — George Eliot

I'm like a fatter version of Amy Winehouse and a skinnier version of Lily Allen. — Katy Perry

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Telling himself there was no harm in one kiss, Severly leaned and gently took her lips with his. As the warmth of his mouth held hers, the world stopped for Celia. Everything became part of this moment - the sunlight filtering in from the window behind them, the scent of tuberoses and lilies, all became part of this, her first kiss. — Rhonda Woodward

The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly. — Stella Gibbons

Put your mouthful of words away
and come with me to watch
the lilies open in such a field,
growing there like yachts,
slowly steering their petals
without nurses or clocks. — Anne Sexton

My heart is a field of lilies blooming under a pane of glass, pitter-pattering to life like a rush of raindrops. — Tahereh Mafi

So in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. — Marcel Proust

I wish I were the lily's leaf To fade upon that bosom warm, Content to wither, pale and brief, The trophy of thy paler form. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We are all fairies living underneath a leaf of a lily pad. — Tori Amos

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. — Oscar Wilde

Do not focus your thoughts among the confused wheels of secondary causes, as -'O if this had been, this had not followed!' Look up to the master motion of the first wheel. In building, we see hewn stones and timbers under hammers and axes, yet the house in this beauty we do not see at the present, but it is in the mind of this builder. We also see unbroken clods, furrows, and stones, but we do not see the summer lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden. Even so we do not presently see the outcome of God's decrees with his blessed purpose. It is hard to believe when his purpose is hidden and under the ground. Providence has a thousand keys to deliver his own even when all hope is gone. Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's. — Samuel Rutherford

Ms. Harrison paled so that the makeup floated on her suddenly pale skin like impressionist water lilies. — Laurell K. Hamilton

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks. — Robert Louis Stevenson

He was dressed in clothes that had clearly never seen the sea. A dark blue suit, accented by a silver cloak, his rich brown hair groomed and threaded with gems to match. A single sapphire sparkled over his right eye. Those eyes, like night lilies caught in moonlight. He used to smell like them, too. Now he smelled like sea breeze and spice, and other things Rhy could not place, from lands he'd never seen — Victoria Schwab

The lilies say: Behold how we
Preach without words of purity. — Christina Rossetti

O, the red rose may be fair, And the lily statelier; But my shamrock, one in three Takes the very heart of me! — Katharine Tynan

Time seemed to stand still as she noticed three droplets of blood splattered on the Indian's cheek. Crimson red, she thought. Three crimson red droplets. The color of the rubescent calla lilies in her mother's garden. Her mother had explained the wine colored flower meant strength, and passionate courage. How fitting, Zee thought as shock of the reality around her began to set in. — Basil Pearl

But who will watch my lilies, When their blossoms open white? By day the sun shall be sentry, And the moon and the stars by night! — Bayard Taylor

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life? — Mary Oliver

The birds on the branches, the lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fishes in the sea, countless hosts of happy men, exultantly proclaim: God is love. But underneath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, as the bass part does, is audible the de profundis which issues from the sacrificed one: God is love. — Walter Lowrie

When I'm working in the barn or house I often think of all the errors I've made in my life. But then I quickly put that behind me and think of water lilies. They will always eradicate unpleasant thoughts. Or goslings are equally comforting in their own way. — Tasha Tudor

But his
marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a
disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without
it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. If
Undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because
her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken
for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral
insouciance with Sheban elegance. — Edith Wharton

But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curled state unfold, Translated to a vase of gold; In burning throne though they keep still Serenities unthawed and chill. — Francis Thompson

I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness. — Andrew Marvell

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls. — Sylvia Plath

All I know is that I am walking on a bridge. Amidst the mist the point where it started appears faded and the bridge ends in bright light that makes it too hard to even look. I need to cross this and I am walking. But, my Lord, I am tired!

I love this blue; I wish if I could see the depth of the river beneath, come back to the surface, float and then to be carried away by the tranquil waves to the banks where a thousand lilies will bloom, look at the sun and say 'we love you'.

O Lord, remember, they are my eyes that longed for a life the boon of your sight! — Preeth Nambiar

Look to the lilies how they grow! 'Twas thus the Saviour said, that we, Even in the simplest flowers that blow, God's ever-watchful care might see. — David Macbeth Moir

To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work. — Hannah Whitall Smith

Death is only attractive in a fashionable dress, with lilies and an open coffin. — Laura L. Sullivan

Personally, I don't use fragrance, and only use essential oils. Stephan [Weiss] said, "Donna, we have to do fragrance - fragrance will last forever - fashion goes up and down. And I said, "I love Casablanca lilies, I love the smell of your neck and I love suede. If you can combine these three together, we can discuss it." — Donna Karan

I always just wanted to be a movie actress, like Lily Tomlin or Ruth Gordon. I just imagined myself being in a movie, wearing stylish women's clothing the way I saw Amy Irving wearing it. — Jenny Slate

The calla lilies are in bloom again. — Katharine Hepburn

On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation. — Haruki Murakami

he said we should concern ourselves only with today, because the lilies in the field toil not, neither do they spin, but arrayed in glory. ... — Paulo Coelho

Before the Battle:
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night. — Siegfried Sassoon

The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould — Oswald Chambers

L am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

We sow the seed of deadly nightshade and wish it to bear lilies and roses! — Gottfried Von Strassburg

When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant. — James Salter

Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white. — Christina Rossetti

Sing and rejoice ye children of the day and the light; for the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt: and the Truth doth flourish as the rose, and lilies do grow among the thorns and the plants atop the hills, and upon them the lambs doth skip and play. — George Fox

We are the bird's eggs. Bird's eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep, we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and springs of wildflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak. But we hear. — Susan Griffin

Shoes twisted into incredible lilies. — William Carlos Williams

There is a garden in her eyes, where roses and white lilies flow. — Thomas Campion

Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. — John Muir

But friendship meant you at least planted the seed for them, love meant allowing them the ability to weed their own garden until it was something healthy and thriving, blooming and bright and smelling of heather and tiger lilies. — Shannon Noelle Long

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them. — Claude Monet

I gazed at Nina and Theodore standing now before the window about to say their vows, or as Nina had phrased it, whatever words their hearts gave them at the moment, and I thought it just as well Mother was not here. She would've expected Nina to be in ivory lace, perhaps blue linen, carrying roses or lilies, but Nina had dismissed all of that as unoriginal and embarked on a wedding designed to shock the masses. She was wearing a brown dress made from free-labor cotton with a broad white sash and white gloves, and she'd matched up Theodore in a brown coat, a white vest, and beige pantaloons. She clutched a handful of white rhododendrons cut fresh from the backyard, and I noticed she'd tucked a sprig in the button hole of Theodore's coat. Mother wouldn't have made it past the brown dress, much less the opening prayer, which had been delivered by a Negro minister. — Sue Monk Kidd

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. — Harper Lee