Famous Quotes & Sayings

Samuel Johnson

The imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence.

Samuel Johnson

To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.

Sarah Ruhl

There's a word in Japanese for being sad in the springtime - a whole word for just being sad - about how pretty the flowers are and how soon they're going to die.

Robert Greene

Her lips are roses over-washed with dew, Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower; No frost their fair, no wind doth waste their power, But by her breath her beauties to renew.

Richard Selzer

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

Richard Ford

I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.

Rebecca Wells

Flowers heal me. Tulips make me happy. I keep myself surrounded by them as soon as they start coming to the island from Canada, and after that when they come from the fields in La Connor, not far from where I live.

Richard Powers

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

Steve Zahn

I have raised beds, perennial beds, cut flower beds. I have an island on a pond that's just covered in peonies. I have an herb garden, tons of vegetables, raspberries. I have everything. I'm a green guy.

Steve Zahn

I've done flowers and kicked myself. Flowers are so lame.

Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy

Robert Green Ingersoll

[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich; I hold in contempt no man because he is poor.

Richard Wiseman

Happiness doesn't just flow from success; it actually causes it.

Sandra Cisneros

Some people need flowers, some people need dandelions. It's medicine, it's what you need at that time in your life.

Sandra Cisneros

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.

Samuel Johnson

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

Samuel Johnson

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

Ruth Ozeki

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.

Robert Jordan

You have made a place in my heart where I thought there was no room for anything else. You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones. Remember this, on this journey you insist on making. If you die, I will not survive you long.

Roberto Bolano

The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.

Roberto Bolano

Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.

There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.

Robert Southey

I can remember, with unsteady feet, Tottering from room to room, and finding pleasure In flowers, and toys, and sweetmeats, things which long Have lost their power to please; which when I see them, Raise only now a melancholy wish I were the little trifler once again, Who could be pleas'd so lightly.

Sarah Orne Jewett

To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service,—this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

Sarah Rees Brennan

Nick spoke for the first time. "Can I go to the nurse's office too?" Ms. Popplewell looked at him It obviously took her only one look to decide. "No." "I'm traumatized too," Nick claimed, his voice completely flat. "He's a delicate flower," Alan said under his breath.

Vincent Nichols

In Christ we see a maturity of love that flowers in self-sacrifice and forgiveness; a maturity of power that never swerves from the ideal of service; a maturity of goodness that overcomes every temptation, and, of course, we see the ultimate victory of life over death itself.

William Henry Hudson

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers - a living prismatic gem.... it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.

Willa Cather

Oh, this is the joy of the rose; That it blows, And goes.

Willa Cather

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple—the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.

Vincent Van Gogh

But for one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.

Vincent Van Gogh

Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

Vincent Van Gogh

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.