Flowers

Be yourself, no matter what they say. ~ Sting

A breeze came wandering from the sky, light as the whispers of a dream ~ William Cullen Bryant

If people never did silly things, then nothing intelligent would ever get done. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. ~ Susan K. Langer

When you are present, the world is truly alive. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Most people want security in this world, not liberty. ~ H.L. Mencken

Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
~ Helen Keller

…with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. ~ William Wordsworth

My spirit has ways of seeing that my eyes cannot comprehend. ~ Philippe Benichou

Sometimes the most
important thing in a whole
day is the rest we take
between two deep breaths
~ Etty Hillesum

Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The Brain – is wider than the Sky -
For – put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease – and You – beside….
The Brain is just the weight of God -
For – Heft them – Pound for Pound -
And they will differ – if they do -
As Syllable from Sound.
~ Emily Dickinson

All gardening is landscape painting. ~ Alexander Pope

No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one. ~ Elbert Hubbard

I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. ~ Renita Weems

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. ~ Albert Ellis

The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction. ~ Kate Chopin

I love feeling the crispness of fall and the sensuality of spring. ~ Christopher Meloni

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. ~ Henry Miller

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season. ~ Henry Adams

The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life. ~ Hugh Walpole, Sr.

Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~ Rossiter W. Raymond

As for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. ~ David Herbert Lawrence

All gardening is landscape painting. ~ Alexander Pope

Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. ~ Navajo Song

I had forgotten what mustard fields looked like… Sheet upon sheet of blazing yellow… It thrilled me like music. ~ Monica Baldwin

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.
~ Milan Kundera

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them. ~ Hermann Hesse

Don’t waste your energy on the ugly. Save it for the beautiful. ~ Harold Arlen

A day is a miniature eternity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. ~ May Sarton

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
~ T.S. Eliot

He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.
~ Anne Bronte

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~ e.e. cummings

The flower…is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
~Jean Giraudoux

Life just seems so full of connections. Most of the time we don’t even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces. ~ Colin Neenan

All who joy would win must share it… ~ Lord Byron

Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance. ~ Morgan Freeman

Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself. ~ Pythagoras

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ~ Coco Chanel

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
~ Alexander Theroux

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
~ Elizabeth Barret Browning

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease … observing a spear of summer grass. ~ Walt Whitman

A white flower grows in the quiet. Let your tongue become that flower. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions…, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. ~ Sylvia Plath

If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point. ~Antonio Porchia

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~ Mary Oliver

Some of us come on earth seeing–some of us come on earth seeing color. ~ Louise Nevelson

Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning, dewdrops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.
- John Milton

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. ~ Marcus Aurelius

In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains
On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame.
The good deeds a man has done before defend him.
~ Bhagavad Gita

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. – Cicero

Lord of the far horizons,
Give us the eyes to see
Over the verge of the sundown
The beauty that is to be.
- Bliss Carman

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit – Henry David Thoreau

The whole world…comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
~Hans Hofmann

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.
~ Ann Frank

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Sensitive Plant,” 1820

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. ~Salvador Dali

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.
~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.
~Jean Giraudoux

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
~ Albert Camus

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour
~ William Blake

I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dripped it carelessly, Ah! I didn’t know, I held opportunity
~ Hazel Lee