Quotes & Sayings About Love And Roses

We may be in the most picturesque part of my family's estate, but you are more beautiful than these roses, and certainly far dearer. I do not, I could not, wish to be parted from you again, as we have been these past months. I love you entirely too much to withstand such a separation again. Please, my friend, my darling, help me prevent such a horrible happening, marry me. — Jessica Schlenker

The rose," he announced. "Loveliest and most formidable of flowers. Arms of York and Lancaster. In medieval times, a symbol of Jesus. Always, it has meant, beauty, love, peace ..."
He presented the bud to Martha Macnamara. It lay resting on his long fingers until she scooped it up. She sniffed it and held it up to the light.
"Symbol? What's a symbol? This is a rose." She smiled and walked on,. — R.A. MacAvoy

I once read that love is like a rose: we fixate on the blossom, but it's the thorny stem that keeps it alive and aloft. I think marriage is like that. Like my father said, the things of greatest value are the things we fight for. And in the end, if we do it right, we value the stem far more than the blossom — Richard Paul Evans

The truth was she did love him. She loved him for the gentle care he gave her roses. For his loving way with animals. For his honesty. For his tender patience with Maggie and, most important, for the joy he brought into her life. — Debbie Macomber

We're withering roses trying to survive all we need is a little love and care and we can be blooming again — Rose Withering

I have seen a lot of beautiful things in my time. I have seen the sun rise and set. I have seen the moon upon the waters reflecting it's love. I have seen roses that's beauty sat upon heaven's doors. I have seen some of the most beautiful things in my life, and none of them can compare to the thought of you. — Vincent Edwards

How I go to the woods
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.
I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much. — Mary Oliver

Feel no regret for roses, autumn too has its delights...How could she say that? Didn't she see that for us there could never be autumn, that we could never sit, as anyone else could sit, beside the fire all day on Sundays in November; that September's leaves, that fall for man and beast alike, were not our leaves to walk in; that October storms would never find us sharing an umbrella? The love of spring had thrived on wine and candles; now in the August of our lives, we needed newspapers and comfortable chairs. But it was impossible. No autumn--only a cold wind that blew through our summer, freezing the leaves in their places before they could motley and fall. — Raphael Carter

That love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you becomecommon. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Behold the box of jabberlock's, the fairest rests inside. But free the dame and ease her pain to slip into her tide. An ocean red from bonds of love, and paint the roses' hearts thereof, applied with wisps of finest strand and guided by an artist's hand. One trade of souls will shut the door, and blood shall seal it, evermore. — A.G. Howard

That is because he's a gentleman," I spat, through with this little game of his.
He laughed but his grip had yet to loosen. "Yeah, that's right. Luke is candy hearts, love sonnets and roses. I'm edible body lotion and lost panties," he said, disgustedly.
Somehow through all of this, I managed to feel sorry for him. "Flynn," I uttered.
"God, Mercy, stop saying my name like that. — Shannon Dermott

Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. — Carl Sandburg

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

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her ... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

My poor Eunice looked so tired when she huffed off the bus with her many bags that I nearly tackled her in a rejuvenating embrace, but I was careful not to make a scene, waving my roses and champagne at the armed men to prove that I had enough Credit to afford Retail, and then kissed her passionately on one cheek (she smelled of flight and moisturizer), then on the straight, thin, oddly non-Asian nose, then the other cheek, then back to the nose, then once more the first cheek, following the curve of freckles backward and forward, marking her nose like a bridge to be crossed twice. The champagne bottle fell out of my hands, but, whatever futuristic garbage it was made of, it didn't break. — Gary Shteyngart

Though what is 'Romeo and Juliet' after all?" he added after a short pause. "The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort of animal as all the rest of us. — Anton Chekhov

I don't think it's ever changed, whether its Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Zeppelin, Guns n' Roses or anyone today, the reason why you get into music is because you love it, and if you're good at it, that's a plus. — Zakk Wylde

you were
and always will be

that first ever touch
to have fertilized
the ground
beneath my life's trees

that first ever rose
to have fragranced
the rest of my memories. — Sanober Khan

I had a beautiful dream the other day. I was coming home from work and you were standing behind white picket fence trimming roses. You were dressed up all in white. We saw each other from afar and smiled. We kissed, got inside our home where our two beautiful children were playing and waiting for us. We all hugged and I kissed your belly because that's where our third child was. You were pregnant. Than all got blurry and white... I was awake. I was sad because my dream has ended but I was happy at the same time because that was the most beautiful and purest dream I have ever had. — J. Zima

Love is a path lined with roses." I say bitterly. "But it leads to a cliff's edge and all who follow it tumble to their doom. You will not find your happiness there. — Jessica Khoury

What would you say to a loved one if you had only a few seconds to impart a last message? What language does love speak?
Some of you speak love with wine and roses. For other, "I love you," is best said by breakfast in bed, carefully set aside sport sections, or night out at the movies, complete with buttered popcorn.
Children spell love T-I-M-E. So, I think, do older folks.
Teenagers spell it T-R-U-S-T. Sometimes parents spell love N-O.
But no matter what the letters, the emotion beneath the wording must be tangible, demonstrable, and sincere. — Angela Elwell Hunt

Red roses symbolizes love. Thorns will hurt you and red roses consists of thorns. — Monika Ramzy

Give her two red roses, each with a note. The first note says For the woman I love and the second, For my best friend. — Saint Augustine

Love wasn't perfection. It wasn't always roses and candy. Hell, it wasn't even mostly roses and candy. Sometimes it was battling back fear that loomed like a leviathan, trying to find a way through misery, being grateful to have a companion who knew your strengths and weaknesses, and loved you not just in spite of them, but because of them. Love was acceptance. Love was bravery. Love was sticking it out. — Chloe Neill

It's urgent-love.
It's urgent- a boat upon the sea.
It's urgent to destroy certain words,
hate, solitude, and cruelty,
some mornings,
many swords.
It's urgent to invent a joyfulness,
multiply kisses and cornfields,
discover roses and rivers
and glistening mornings- it's urgent.
Silence and an impure light fall upon our shoulders till they ache.
It's urgent- love, it's urgent
to endure. — Eugenio De Andrade

For marriage is like life in this - that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. — Robert Louis Stevenson

How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting?
Better go drunk and begging round the taverns.
Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours
Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar.
When once you hear the roses are in bloom,
Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine;
Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell-
These are but fairy-tales, forget them all. — Omar Khayyam

Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You send me all these roses.
Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up.
I'm running out of vases.
I didn't know roses came in so many colors.
You say they're the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain.
I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
And you don't get it.
You say you love me, but you don't speak my language.
You don't even realize I'm an orchid girl. — Erin Morgenstern

The Louvre! The Louvre has me in its clutches. Every time I'm there rich blessings rain down upon me. I am coming to understand Titian more and more and learning to love him. And then there is Botticelli's sweet Madonna, with red roses behind her, standing against a blue-green sky. And Fiesole with his poignant little biblical stories, so simply told, often so glorious in their colors. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

She was chaos and beauty intertwined. A tornado of roses from divine. — Shakieb Orgunwall

In my mind, I gave the woman gifts. I gave her a candle stub. I gave her a box of wooden kitchen matches. I gave her a cake of Lifebuoy soap. I gave her a ceilingful of glow-in-the-dark planets. I gave her a bald baby doll. I gave her a ripe fig, sweet as new wood, and a milkdrop from its stem. I gave her a peppermint puff. I gave her a bouquet of four roses. I gave her fat earthworms for her grave. I gave her a fish from Roebuck Lake, a vial of my sweat for it to swim in. — Lewis Nordan

It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

No matter what she was doing-baking cookies, walking around the lake on a beautiful day, making love to her husband-she felt rushed and jittery, as if the last few grains of sand were at that very moment sliding through the narrow waist of an hourglass. Any unforeseen occurrence-road construction, an inexperienced cashier, a missing set of keys-could plunge her into a mood of frantic despair that could poison an entire day. — Tom Perrotta

I know these are only dreams. I know these days are long past. I wake to a dream in which Hammer's breath has stopped, and mine with it, and hearts have gone to a quiet sunny meadow with the sweetest little cottage in the middle, with a millwheel and a stream. Our bodies will lie tangled until they become earth, like roses twining so closely there is no beginning and no end, and only the shades of beauty that were their growing.
Every dream I ever had as a child has come true, simply because Hammer loved me. Perhaps this one will too. — Amy Lane

For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere ... ' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Gacela of the Flight"

I have lost myself in the sea many tunes
with my ear full of freshly cut flowers,
with my tongue full of love awl agony.
I have lost myself in the sea many times
as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

There is no one who in giving a kiss
does not feel the smile of faceless people,
and no one who in touching a newborn child
forgets the motionless skulls of horses.

Because the roses search in the forehead
for a hard landscape of hone
and the hands of man hate no other purpose
than to imitate the roots below the earth.

As I lose myself in the heart of certain children,
I have lost myself in the sea many times.
Ignorant of the water I go seeking
a death full of light to consume me. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I don't get the point, really," I'd said as we contemplated the plastic-wrapped roses. "Why give a girl something that's supposed to represent love that's only going to wilt and die in a matter of hours?"
Steven laughed and said that was a pretty pessimistic way to view life, and I shrugged.
Then he said, "All the best things are like that, though, Lex, the most beautiful things. Part of the beauty comes from the fact that they're short-lived." He picked up a bouquet of deep-red roses, held it out to me. "These will never be as beautiful as they are at this moment, so we have to enjoy them now."
I stared at him. He scratched the back of his neck, a little red-faced, then gave me a sheepish grin. "Just call me a romantic," he said.
I wanted to say that there were some things in this world, some rare things, that were beautiful and stayed that way. — Cynthia Hand

Think of something useless, and that's probably what I'll be doing. Listen, Virginia, we need to love the useless. We need to raise pigeons without a thought of eating them, plant rose bushes without expecting to pick roses, write without aiming at publication. We need to do things without expecting benefits in return. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but it's in the curving paths that the best things are found ... We must love the useless, because there is beauty in uselessness. — Lygia Fagundes Telles

It's okay to show up at a guy's house with a dozen roses and declare your undying affection. It's okay to have too much to drink and call your ex twenty times and then to be mortally embarrassed when you realize your number must have shown up on his caller I.D. It's okay, because making a fool of yourself for love is ultimately about you, how much you have to give and the distance you will travel to keep your heart wide open when everything around you makes you feel like slamming it shut and soldering it closed. — Veronica Chambers

She was coming. I watched the slight figure grow out of the dusk between the trees, and the darkness in which I had walked of late fell away. The wood that had been so gloomy was a place of sunlight and song; had red roses sprung up around me I had felt no wonder. She came softly and slowly with bent head and hanging arms, not knowing that I was near. I went not to meet her - it was my fancy to have her come to me still - but when she raised her eyes and saw me I fell upon my knees. — Mary Johnston

It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses. — D.H. Lawrence

Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this
love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. — Virginia Woolf

The artist that had the biggest impact on me was Michael Jackson. He was my Elvis and Beatles. When I was 15, I listened to a lot of Sinatra, but my jean jacket didn't have, 'I love Frank' on it, it had, 'I love AC/DC', 'Guns N Roses', 'Pearl Jam'. I thought Eddie Vedder was the second coming. — Michael Buble

Like the garlic mustard in my garden and the roses on my fence, love has a funny way of blooming after years of being buried. — Sarah Strohmeyer

Down in the valley, leaves fall from trees, the branches are bare. All the flowers have faded, their blossoms once so beautiful. The frost attacks many herbs and kills them. I grieve. But if the winter is so cold, there must be new joys. Help me sing a joy of a hundred thousand times greater than the buds of May. I will sing of roses on the red cheeks of my lady. Could I win her favor, this lovely lady would give me such joy I would need no other. (Jack)
What are you saying? (Lorelei)
Noble lady, I ask nothing of you save that you should accept me as your servant. I will serve you as a good lord should serve, whatever the reward may be. Here I am, then, at your orders, sincere and humble, gay and courteous. You are not, after all, a bear or lion, and would not kill me, surely, if I put myself between your hands. I love you, my lady, Lorelei. Marry me and I swear I shall never again do or say anything to harm you and I will slay anyone who does. (Jack) — Kinley MacGregor

If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience ... would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love? — Aberjhani

I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed
Love me so much as now you say you do?
Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea,
Ask of the roses if they love the rain,
Ask of the little lark, that will not sing
Till day break, if it loves to see the day:
And yet, these are but empty images,
Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire
So great that all the waters of the main
Can not avail to quench it. — Oscar Wilde

So Recklessly Exposed

December and January, gone.
Tulips coming up. It's time to watch
how trees stagger in the wind
and roses never rest.

Wisteria and Jasmine twist on themselves.
Violet kneels to Hyacinth, who bows.

Narcissus winks, wondering what will
the lightheaded Willow say
of such slow dancing by Cypress.

Painters come outdoors with brushes.
I love their hands.

The birds sing suddenly and all at once.
The soul says Ya Hu, quietly.

A dove calls, Where, ku?
Soul, you will find it.

Now the roses show their breasts.
No one hides when the Friend arrives.

The Rose speaks openly to the Nightingale.
Notice how the Green Lily has several tongues
but still keeps her secret.

Now the Nightingale sings this love
that is so recklessly exposed, like you. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Roses are red and violets are blue, That played-out shit isn't for you. I got your love letter right here in my eyes. If you look deep enough, you'll see through the lies. — Wendy Higgins

You're back early from Chicago," Jim remarked, seemingly oblivious to his friend's cold reserve. "I wonder why?"
"You know damned well why," Nick retorted grimly.
Jim's brows lifted, but he turned his tawny, appreciative gaze on Lauren. "I'd tell you how gorgeous you look,but at the moment,Nick is already restraining the urge to knock my teeth down my throat.
"Why?" Lauren gasped, her own gaze flying to Nick's granite features.
Jim answered with a chuckle. "It has something to do with two dozen red roses and a kiss he witnessed.He's forgotten about a girl I was in love with once but couldn't quite get up the nerve to ask to marry me. He got tired of waiting for me to bolster my courage, so he sent Ericka two dozen-"
Nick's breath exploded in laughter. "You bastard," he said good-naturedly, and this time his handclasp was sincere. — Judith McNaught

A mother's love is like an everlasting bed of roses, that continues to blossom. A mother's love bears strength, comfort, healing and warmth. Her beauty is compared to a sunny day that shines upon each rose petal and inspires hope. — Ellen J. Barrier

Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden - you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha. — Rajneesh

Such a morning it is when love leans through geranium windows and calls with a cockerel's tongue. When red-haired girls scamper like roses over the rain-green grass, and the sun drips honey. — Laurie Lee

To lovers, I devise their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red, red roses by the wall, the snow of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love. — Williston Fish

What kind of woman was she? What kind of woman was it who called to me from that calamity on the Seventh Avenue line? What kind of woman do I love now, with a fealty that will not cease, not till my occluded arteries send their clots up to the spongy interiors in my skull and I go mute and slack? I love the kind of woman whose hair has gone gray in a not terribly flattering way, the kind who doesn't even notice how she has to keeps having to buy larger jeans, the kind who likes big cars because she doesn't like to be uncomfortable. I love this woman because she is gifted with astounding premonitory skills: no matter how uncertain, how despondent, how lost her mate feels, no matter how dire the circumstances, she nonetheless predicts that Everything will be roses. — Rick Moody

I CANNOT tell you now;
When the wind's drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind's a whisper at last
Maybe I'll tell you then
some other time.
When the rose's flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"
Maybe I'll tell you then
some other time.
I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any
greater than you. — Carl Sandburg

Sweet girl, maybe close the world off and look at him for an hour
or two.
This is your fairy.
It ain't perfect and it ain't honey sweet with roses on the bed.
It's real and raw and ugly at times. But this is your love.
Don't throw it away searching for someone else's love. Don't be greedy. Instead, shelter it. Protect it. Capture every second of easy, pull through every storm of hardship. And when you can, look at him, lying next to you, trusting you not to harm him. Trusting you not to go.
Be someone's someone for someone.
Be that someone for him. — Charlotte Eriksson

Eyes. "I'm sorry for your loss, Emma," he said stepping forward, offering them to me. "The opened roses are for your parents, and the one that's still closed, is for you. With the love and support around you, it's just a matter of time before you bloom. — Cameo Renae

We wouldn't ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals, in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun, well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals, dont ask me why, thank god, and ask me how — Tupac Shakur

When you are old, at evening candle-lit
beside the fire bending to your wool,
read out my verse and murmur, "Ronsard writ
this praise for me when I was beautiful."
And not a maid but, at the sound of it,
though nodding at the stitch on broidered stool,
will start awake, and bless love's benefit
whose long fidelities bring Time to school.
I shall be thin and ghost beneath the earth
by myrtle shade in quiet after pain,
but you, a crone, will crouch beside the hearth
mourning my love and all your proud disdain.
And since what comes to-morrow who can say?
Live, pluck the roses of the world to-day. — Pierre De Ronsard

The house became full of love. Aureliano expressed it in poetry that had no beginning and no end. He would write it on the harsh pieces of parchment that Melquiades gave him, on the bathroom walls, on the skin of his arms, and in all of it Remedios would appear transfigured: Remedios in the soporific air of two in the afternoon, Remedios in the soft breath of the roses, Remedios in the water-clock secrets of the moths, Remedios in the steaming morning bread, Remedios everywhere and Remedios forever. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. — Charles Bukowski

What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as "the prophet of bigger and better orgasms"? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives? — Wilhelm Reich

Send two dozen roses to Room 424 and put "Emily, I love you" on the back of the bill. — Groucho Marx

I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses — E. E. Cummings

I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.'
'And then you won't know me, sir, and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket, -a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome,sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me. — Charlotte Bronte

In my humdrum life I was exalted one day by perfumes exhaled by a world that had been so bland. They were the troubling heralds of love. Suddenly love itself had come, with its roses and its flutes, sculpting, papering, closing, perfuming everything around it. Love had blended with the most immense breath of the thoughts themselves, the respiration that, without weakening love, had made it infinite. But what did I know about love itself? Did I, in any way, clarify its mystery, and did I know anything about it other than the fragrance of its sadness and the smell of its fragrances? Then, love went away, and the perfumes, from shattered flagons, were exhaled with a purer intensity. The scent of a weakened drop still impregnates my life. — Marcel Proust

Her poetry is written on the ghost of trees, whispered on the lips of lovers.
As a little girl, she would drift in and out of libraries filled with dead poets and their musky scent. She held them in her hands and breathed them in
wanting so much to be part of their world ...
It was on her sixteenth birthday that she first fell in love. With a boy who brought her red roses and white lies. When he broke her heart, she cried for days.
Then hopeful, she sat with a pen in her hand, poised over the blank white sheet, but it refused to draw blood ...
She learned too late that poets are among the damned, cursed to commiserate over their loss, to reach with outstretched hands
hands that will never know the weight of what they seek. — Lang Leav

Love is the synthesis of dream and actuality; love is the only matrix of the unprecedented; love is the tree which buds lovers like roses. — Angela Carter

Older people are always searching for treasure, but she thinks they look in the wrong places. If they knew about her herb garden, the roses in bloom, and Maman's horse, Beth is certain people would value all these things. They would love them like she does when she sits behind her house, breathing, dreaming. — J.J. Brown

The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention. Love concentrates so intently on another that you forget yourself at that moment. Attention says, "I value you enough to give you my most precious asset - my time." Whenever you give your time, you are making a sacrifice, and sacrifice is the essence of love. Jesus modeled this: "Be full of love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave Himself to God as a sacrifice to take away your sins" (Ephesians 5:2, LB). — Rick Warren

Love was not the point and pity was a poor man's pride. — Holly Lynn Payne

I love 'The War Of The Roses,' especially as my husband is in it! I've often said to him it would be great to remake that with me and him in it, because then we could really get down to some serious business. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse -
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident. — William Carlos Williams

That's the thing," Jo says. "You think you know what you're in for. I mean, you tell yourself that, of course, it's not going to be wine and roses and all of that bullshit for the rest of your life, but then, one day, you wake up, and your fucking husband has morphed into someone whom you barely recognize. And you sit there and you stare at him while he scratches his balls through his underwear at the kitchen table, and you think, 'This is totally not what I signed up for. I mean, who knows if I even love this ball-scratching, foul-breathed man?' And then you wonder if you love him more out of habit than out of anything else." She chews the inside of her lip and considers. "And I guess from there, all bets are off. — Allison Winn Scotch

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever. — Haruki Murakami

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin ... — Shirley Jackson

Noah doesn't hold hands often. In fact, it was one of the few rules I understood, and it's not lost on me how special this moment is. It's like the roses. Noah's showing me his love. — Katie McGarry

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. — William Shakespeare

I love the sound of a brand-new bottle of coke when you pry the lid off and it starts to fizz. Whenever I hear that sound, I think of roses, and of sitting together with someone you care about and of Romeo and Juliet waking up somewhere and saying to each other, weren't we jerks? And then having all that be over. That's what I think of when I hear the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke being opened — Gary D. Schmidt

But love isn't always roses and rainbows and butterflies in your stomach. It's equally cruel and painful and the world's worst villain. — J.A. Redmerski

In the beginning we start with roses. The king's flower right? Only they wilt in less than a day, especially when exposed to the elements. But Carnations? Oh, what a beautiful flower. They come in every color. True, some are painted, but that doesn't mean they are less beautiful, and they never wilt. — Ruth McLeod-Kearns

That was the thing about love, I'd discovered. It wasn't about having a blissfully wonderful relationship where everything was always sunshine and roses. No matter how pure and beautiful your love was, life could be cruel and ugly. It would throw things at your relationship when you were tired and broke. It would be strained and tested through the worst of storms. Real love, though, the kind that saw couples live through sixty years of World Wars and recessions and still let them stare at each other on their death bed with the same devotion that they felt on their wedding day, love like that, well, it lasted forever. — R.J. Prescott

He will grow up into one of those people who lean back to smile and jump so easily it looks like slow motion and steer cars with their knees and snitch roses from gardens to give to girls and write with their left hand and own two pairs of jeans and one jacket and fall in love from such a height and so hard and so completely that they never quite recover from the drop.
But at least he will have me to look out for him. — Hilary McKay

Every Valentine's Day, the student council sponsered a holiday fundraiser by selling roses that would be delievered in class. The roses came in four colors:white, yellow, red, pink, and the subtleties of thier meaning were parsed and analyzed by the female population to no end. Mimi had always understood it thus:white for love, yellow for friendship, red for passion, and pink for a secret crush. — Melissa De La Cruz

It's too soon, too fast. We don't even know each other."
"Says who?" Ethan demanded. "Who decides how long it should take? Who makes the rules?"
Erica shrugged because she really didn't know it just seemed like common sense.
He put his index finger under her chin and swept his thumb just under her lower lip. "I do know you." He whispered. "I know you love chocolate and hate roses. I know you are kind and compassionate and generous. I know you feed the homeless and the stray cat that lives behind your apartment. I know you are a hopeless romantic. You are fiercely loyal." His eyes took on a mischievous glint. "I know you are ticklish; I know what makes you moan; I know what makes you squirm." He kissed her softly. "I know when I am with you I don't want to be anywhere else." He kissed her again and this time she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Their tongues tangled in a duel that left her breathless. — Melissa Hale

Your love is my treasure And my heart is buried there. Your touch is my pleasure Soothing my soul with every care. Subject of my poetry, Love of my youth, Melody to my songs Of joy absolute, Would you believe me? I speak the truth When in poem and song I say to you, That when violets turn red And roses bloom blue That's the day I'll stop loving you. — Warren L.G De Mills

The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades? — Edgar Lee Masters

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

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses. — Arthur Symons

What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine. — Thomas Moore

Every time Valentine's Day came around, I'd hold out the stupid hope that maybe there'd be some guy who had a secret crush on me and would buy me a rose to finally declare his love. Then the day would come, and of course, nobody bought me a rose, and I'd end up getting really depressed, looking at all the pretty girls in my homeroom with their roses. — Alice Wasser

THE HOUSE OF PAIN

Unto the Prison House of Pain none willingly

repair, -
The bravest who an entrance gain
Reluctant linger there,
For Pleasure, passing by that door, stays not to

cheer the sight.
And Sympathy but muffles sound and banishes the

light.

Yet in the Prison House of Pain things full of

beauty blow, -
Like Christmas-roses, which attain
Perfection 'mid the snow, -
Love, entering, in his mild warmth the darkest

shadows melt,
And often, where the hush is deep, the waft of

wings is felt.

Ah, me ! the Prison House of Pain ! - what lessons
there are bought ! -
Lessons of a sublimer strain
Than any elsewhere taught, -
Amid its loneliness and gloom, grave meanings

grow more clear,
For to no earthly dwelling-place seems God so
strangely near ! — Florence Earle Coates

Roses
got thorns.
And words
do lie.

I've seen love
die. — George Elliott Clarke

Love
My soul was a light-blue gown, sky-coloured;
I left it on a cliff by the sea
and naked I came to you, resembling a woman.
And like a woman I sat at your table
and drank a toast with wine and breathed in the scent of several roses.
You found me beautiful, resembling something you'd seen dreaming,
I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my homeland,
I knew only that your caresses held me captive.
And, smiling, you took up a mirror and bade me look.
I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and crumbled away,
I saw that my beauty was sick and had no desire other than to - disappear.
Oh, hold me close in your arms, so tightly that I need nothing. — Edith Sodergran

It's the only way to know you're really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he'll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It's when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it's when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It's not roses and white horses, it's fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave. — Renee Carlino

Two or more year ago she was out workin' in her rose garden one mornin' - did you know, boy, she's got over sixty different kinds out there? - and she said to me, said, 'Mr. Blakeslee, I wouldn't even mind dyin' if'n I could be buried in a bed of roses. — Olive Ann Burns

The attentions of Wilkie Mackenzie were a conquest, an aspiration, a dream. The fresh memory of all those women, batting their eyelashes coquettishly, it boiled in my veins. One in particular. And Wilkie looked almost amused, now that his own jealousy had eased. "Are you jealous, my love? — Juliette Miller

O rose! the sweetest blossom,
Of spring the fairest flower,
O rose! the joy of heaven.
The god of love, with roses
His yellow locks adorning,
Dances with the hours and graces. — James Gates Percival