c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Well -- think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no -- hang on -- this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way?
— Donna Tartt
Not only does evil depend upon good, but in this case, darkness depends upon light.
— Jonathan L. Walls, The Legend of Zelda and Theology
...in the Twilight Princess worldview, darkness is not necessarily correlated with evil, just as light is not necessarily correlated with good.
— Jonathan L. Walls
I believe that there is good in everyone, even an evil pirate such as you.
— Carmela Dutra, Lorenzo the Bear: Encounter at Jellyfish Cove
Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked.
— Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
Happiness is a fortress.
— Fuminori Nakamura, Evil and the Mask
If one cannot gain recognition foranything else, he can rest well with the assurance that he is "good," which in most cases equates with "right". Were it not for an evil to rail against he might just as well never have been born. Yes, evil is the great savior and sustainer of those whocondemn it most.
— Anton Szandor LaVey
I have known many survivors for whom the holocaust is the central them of their lives. They have no other. I have tried to live with tolerance and forgiveness as the theme of my life. God have us the power to be good or evil. This is our choice. Because some pick evil, we must work together to recognize and stop it. But while we survivors may lead the change, we cannot do this alone. It must be the goal of all people. If we will join in this goal, then there is hope for humanity.
— Andrea Warren, Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps
If good men pretend to be villains, how is anybody supposed to know the difference between them?
— Sarah Rees Brennan, Grim
Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version
He had memorized the entire Qur'an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
How is it possible that anyone can believe in a kind of God of Evil named Satan or Devil? Surely, evil lies within oneself.
— Ralph P. Vander Heide
If one cannot gain recognition for anything else, he can rest well with the assurance that he is "good," which in most cases equates with "right". Were it not for an evil to rail against he might just as well never have been born. Yes, evil is the great savior and sustainer of those who condemn it most.
— Anton Szandor LaVey
Good to evil seems evil a
— Ray Bradbury
If the universe is trying to maintain balance, we must aid this by ensuring that Good is not enjoyed excessively. Or else the universe will re-balance itself by creating Evil to counteract Good. That is the purpose of Evil: it balances the Good.
— Amish Tripathi, The Oath of the Vayuputras
When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice.We can choose to be taken by the evil.Or we can try to embrace the good.
— Elizabeth Smart, My Story
Light and dark ain't supposed to mix. They're like broccoli and chocolate - just nasty when you put them together - but that appears to be what's happening with you
— H.M. Ward, Cursed
Whether a character is good or evil depends on your perspective.
— Steve Jones Snr
Good does not exist.It is merely an absent of evil.
— Yona me
...or perhaps about acknowledging that life is a delicate balance of great forces, and that good would lose its potency if there was no evil left to fight in the world.
— Anne Fortier, Juliet
Nature is not kind
—  it is not good. Do you really think nature cares about any individual living thing?
Goodness will always win over evil, no matter how much the evil attempts to break you. More than that, you are never truly in darkness. Sometimes, all you need to do is turn on the light.
— Melyssa Winchester, Holding on to Heaven
Deep down, she's a good person, Diana is," Caine said, and sighed. "Deep down, I'm not. But she is.
— Michael  Grant, Light
Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.
— August Strindberg, The Road to Damascus
Beware when wrong-doing is called good and right-doing is called evil.
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
A book is a private thing, citizen; it belongs to the one who writes it and to the one who reads it. Like the mind itself, a book is a private space. Within that space, anything is possible. The greatest evil and the greatest good.
— Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade
Good and evil has no passport; it speaks in different tongues, wears many skins, and exists everywhere, even in the same person
— A.H. Amin, Psychs
Hope starts as a promise made to yourself, the first drop of rain in a parched land, the first step onto dry earth for a shipwreck survivor. It is a listening crowd for a lonely heart.What we hope in must be greater than us; therefore, we will always need something greater than man to believe in. Good and evil may be a necessity to perceive our world, but hope is a prerequisite for life.
— Christopher Hawke, Unnatural Truth
Evil flourishes because the good aren't good enough," see murmured. "And sometimes the good just have bad days.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
There is more goodness than evil in the world, but you know, you still got to work at it.
— Lasky Kathryn
On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
You see we do, yet see you but our handsAnd this the bleeding business they have done:Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful
— William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
I want to dance always, to be good and not evil, and when it is all over not to have the feeling that I might have done better.
— Ruth St. Denis
The greatest power of bureaucracies is to make the smart act stupid and the good to act evil.
— Raul Ramos y Sanchez, Pancho Land
Satan's survival-of-the-fittest system appears to work- in the short run. But the great controversy is about the long run.
— Jack Provonsha
The disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, tell of a dream he had. In the dream, the very incarnation of the Evil Impulse appears in the form of a sinister heart. The Baal Shem Tov seizes the heart and pounds it furiously. He would destroy evil and redeem the world. As he pummels it, he hears an infant’s sobbing emitted from the heart. He stops beating it. In the midst of evil is a voice of innocence; there is goodness entangled in evil.
— Harold M. Schulweis
If 9 out of 10 grandmothers selected from 10 respective cultures can agree it is evil, then it's evil. Cut it out.
— Lynda Williams
Whoever hurt you had a choice to hurt you or love you. It was his choice whoever he is, not yours. It is the same as how Hank made the choice to beat on me and Mom instead of loving us the way he should have. As you told me, that was not my fault either. I believe it is the option of choice that makes evil possible. When he made his choice, you really had no choice.” [said Craig]
— Sarah  Richards, Taken in the Woods
Good to evil seems evil
— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so.
— Jim Butcher, Cold Days
And those characters [in a fairy tale] dwell in a moral world, whose laws are as clear as the law of gravity. That too is a great advantage of the folk tale. It is not a failure of imagination to see the sky blue. It is a failure rather to be weary of its being blue- and not to notice how blue it is. And appreciation of the subtler colors of the sky will come later. In the folk tale, good is good and evil is evil, and the former will triumph and later will fail. This is not the result of the imaginative quest. It is rather its principle and foundation. It is what will enable the child later on to understand Macbeth, or Don Quixote, or David Copperfield.
— Anthony M. Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child
Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.
— Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy
That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.
— Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda
As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
— Henry David Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau
Some people misunderstand evil and believe it will relent, and because their misplaced hope inspires dark hearts to dream darker dreams, they are the fathers and mothers of all wars. Evil does not relent; it must be defeated. And even when defeated, uprooted, and purified by fire, evil leaves behind a seed that will one day germinate and, in blooming, again be misunderstood.
— Dean Koontz
I must have flowers, always, and always.
— Claude Monet
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
— Tennessee Williams, Camino Real
who knows if the moon'sa balloon,coming out of a keen cityin the sky--filled with pretty people?( and if you and I shouldget into it,if theyshould take me and take you into their balloon,why thenwe'd go up higher with all the pretty peoplethan houses and steeples and clouds:go sailingaway and away sailing into a keen city which nobody's ever visited,wherealways it's Spring)and everyone'sin love and flowers pick themselves
— E.E. Cummings, Collected Poems
In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.
— Kakuzō Okakura, The Book Of Tea
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.
— Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
Raff,' Katsa said, 'your problem is that your heart's not in it. We need to find something to strengthen your defensive resolve. What if you pretended he's trying to smash your favorite medicinal plant?''The rare blue safflower,' Bann suggested.'Yes,' Katsa said gamely, 'pretend he's after your snaf
— Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue
The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.
— Lurlene McDaniel, Don't Die, My Love
In the village, a sage should go about Like a bee, which, not harmingFlower, colour or scent, Flies off with the nectar.
— Anonymous, The Dhammapada
One person's weed is another person's wildflower.
— Susan Wittig Albert, An Unthymely Death and Other Garden Mysteries
I sometimes think that never blows so redThe Rose as where some buried Caesar bled
— That every Hyacinth the Garden wearsDropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.
Flowers are the Romeos and the Juliets of the nature!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,' said Priscilla.'Then your soul is a golden narcissus,' said Anne, 'and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet.''And our own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,' finished Priscilla.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.
— Herbert Rappaport
What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like "So-and-so is in the flower of his youth", which is as absurd as saying "in the vagina of his youth".
— Amélie Nothomb, Le Sabotage amoureux
And that reminds me, Mama! I have just intercepted another of that puppy’s floral offerings to my sister. This billet was attached to it.” (Charles)
— Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.
— Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster
Flowers are the beautiful hairs of the Mother Spring! Don’t pluck them!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either killing with his own hands or, by buying extravagantly, procuring people of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear. ...Eccentricity, in fact, is immorality--think over it again if you do not think so now--just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either); and if a species is rare it follows that it is not Fitted to Survive. The collector is after all merely like the foot soldier in the days of heavy armour-he leaves the combatants alone and cuts the throats of those who are overthrown. So one may go through England from end to end in the summer time and see only eight or ten commonplace wild flowers, and the commoner butterflies, and a dozen or so common birds, and never be offended by any breach of the monotony.
— H.G. Wells, The Wonderful Visit
I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.
— John  Bartlett
....breakups mean flowers.
— Marsha Qualey, Just Like That
At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and took a few minutes with each of them: ageratum, coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia. The yarrow, he said, had rose-red flowers on two-foot stems. Achillea millefolium, the plant Achilles used to heal wounds.
— Frederick Weisel, Teller
Agatha surveys the garden, its rows of crinkled spring cabbages and beanstalks entwining bowers of hawthorn and hazel. The rosemary is dotted with pale blue stars of blossom and chives nod heads of tousled purple. New sage leaves sprout silver green among the brittle, frost-browned remains of last year's growth. Lily of the valley, she thinks, that will be out in the cloister garden at Saint Justina's by now.
— Sarah Bower, The Needle in the Blood
Suddenly Damask found herself staring down at the flowers through a dazzle of tears. The words sounded so innocent and so disarming - she remembered that she hadn't wanted to come through the beautiful woods at all; and there was no danger, nothing wrong except the wickedness of her own heart. She looked at Danny's big, brown, work-scarred hands gently gathering the flowers and her love for him was a physical pain. Oh, how she loved him; how she wished that he would ask her to marry him!"Norah Lofts
— Norah Lofts, Afternoon of  an Autocrat
Endless love and voluptuous appetite pervaded this stifling nave in which settled the ardent sap of the tropics. Renée was wrapped in the powerful bridals of the earth that gave birth to these dark growths, these colossal stamina; and the acrid birth-throes of this hotbed, of this forest growth, of this mass of vegetation aglow with the entrails that nourished it, surrounded her with disturbing odours. At her feet was the steaming tank, its tepid water thickened by the sap from the floating roots, enveloping her shoulders with a mantle of heavy vapours, forming a mist that warmed her skin like the touch of a hand moist with desire. Overhead she could smell the palm trees, whose tall leaves shook down their aroma. And more than the stifling heat, more than the brilliant light, more than the great dazzling flowers, like faces laughing or grimacing between the leaves, it was the odours that overwhelmed her. An indescribable perfume, potent, exciting, composed of a thousand different perfumes, hung about her; human exudation, the breath of women, the scent of hair; and breezes sweet and swooningly faint were blended with breezes coarse and pestilential, laden with poison. But amid this strange music of odours, the dominant melody that constantly returned, stifling the sweetness of the vanilla and the orchids' pungency, was the penetrating, sensual smell of flesh, the smell of lovemaking escaping in the early morning from the bedroom of newlyweds.
— Émile Zola, La Curée
Passion is a rare flower that grows on the precipice of death. A few snatch it, and the rest are like an ox chewing its cud in a field.
— Saunders Lewis, Blodeuwedd
The perfume of incense reminds us of the pervading influence of virtue, the lamp reminds us of light of knowledge and the flowers which soon fade and die, reminds us of impermanence. When we bow, we express our gratitude to the Buddha for what his teachings have given us. This is the nature of Buddhist worship.
— Anonymous
If you want a forgotten corner to be remembered, a featureless place to be loved, a shadowy emptiness to shine, put some flowers there!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
He swept the red cloak around Inej's shoulders in a rain of petals and blossoms as she continued to strap on her knives. She looked almost as startled as the flower seller."What?" he asked as he tossed her a Mister Crimson mask that matched his own."Those were my mother's favorite flower.""Good to know Van Eck didn't cure you of sentiment.""Nice to be back, Kaz.""Good to have you back, Wraith.
— Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom
I didn't wave my daisy. I felt small, the way an ant must feel looking up at a field of wildflowers. I was nothing. I was trapped below flowers, buried under them, while girls like Lizzie Lovett danced overhead. That was life. We all have a place.
— Chelsea Sedoti, The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett
Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections, Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it
— Arthur Hugh Clough, The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
She forced herself to stroll casually and appraise her plants. The wisteria was shedding its final leaves, the jasmine had long lost its flowers, but the autumn had been mild and the pink roses were still in bloom. Eliza went closer, took a half-opened bud between her fingers and smiled at the perfect raindrop caught within its inner petals. The thought was sudden and complete. She must make a bouquet, a welcome-home gift for Rose. Her cousin was fond of flowers, but more than that, Eliza would select plants that were a symbol of their bond. There must be ivy for friendship, pink rose for happiness, and some of the exotic oak-leaved geranium for memories...
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Drab and colorless as her existence would seem to have been, Mrs. Harris had always felt a craving for beauty and color and which up to this moment had manifested itself in a love for flowers....Outside the windows of her basement flat were two window boxes of geraniums, her favorite flower, and inside, wherever there was room, there was a little pot containing a geranium struggling desperately to conquer its environment, or a single hyacinth or tulip, bought from a barrow for a hard-earned shilling. Then too, the people for whom she worked would sometimes present her with the leavings of their cut flowers which in their wilted state she would take home and try to nurse back to health, and once in a while, particularly in the spring, she would buy herself a little box of pansies, primroses or anemones. As long as she had flowers Mrs. Harris had no serious complaints concerning the life she led. They were her escape from the somber stone desert in which she lived. These bright flashes of color satisfied her. They were something to return to in the evening, something to wake up to in the morning.
— Paul Gallico, Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris
Only five minutes later he noticed a dozen crocuses growing round the foot of an old tree- gold and purple and white. Then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of water. Close beside the path they were following, a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree. It was answered by the chuckle of another bird a little further off. And then, as if that had been a signal, there was chattering and chirruping in every direction, and then a moment of full song, and within five minutes the whole wood was ringing with birds' music, and wherever Edmund's eyes turned he saw birds alighting on branches, or sailing overhead or chasing one another or having their little quarrels or tidying up their feathers with their beaks."Faster! Faster!" said the Witch.There was no trace of the fog now. The sky became bluer and bluer, and now there were white clouds hurrying across it from time to time. In the wide glades there were primroses. A light breeze sprang up which scattered drops of moisture from the swaying branches and carried cool, delicious scents against the faces of the travelers. The trees began to come fully alive. The larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold. Soon the beech trees had put forth their delicate, transparent leaves. As the travelers walked under them the light also became green. A bee buzzed crossed their path.
— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
There was certainly plenty to watch and listen to. The tree which Digory had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above his head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the river bank, willows were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, and rhododendron closed them in.
— C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
Yorkshire had none of the color I'd known in Cape Town- the vivid pinks and purples of the freesias and arum lilies in the flower sellers' baskets. Yorkshire had none of the fragrant floral perfume, or the tang of salt in the air from the ocean.
— Hazel Gaynor, The Cottingley Secret
They appeared to me like a thin veil of mist, translucent, almost- not quite there. But for all their misty peculiarity, they were as clear to me as the minnows in the shallows and the foxgloves on the riverbank and the butterflies fanning their wings. They flitted from flower to flower, as swift as dragonflies, sometimes glowing brightly like a candle flame suddenly catching, sometimes fading like a breath of warm air on glass, so that you would never know they had been there at all. Yet there they were. And there I was, watching them.
— Hazel Gaynor, The Cottingley Secret
Sorrel always thought herself happy in the little village by the sea. She was content among her flowers and specimen trees, the extraordinary roses and lilacs, sweet peas and hydrangeas that bloomed- somehow simultaneously and for months beyond reason- in the Nursery. She found great pleasure in picking the pears, cherries, and apples for Nettie's tarts, the tender young peas and beans, the lettuce so green it glowed, and the nasturtiums and violas that her sister used in her salads. She was grateful for Patience's remedies on the rare occasion when she felt ill. But Sorrel's hands were happiest deep in the soil and curled around the stems of the flowers she grew and arranged.
— Ellen Herrick, The Forbidden Garden
The frozen ﬂowers never go away. They hang around somewhere all the time. I think we need to talk about vases.Did you hear the sound of the white ﬂower?
— Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
You have only to say one word and I would know your voice among all other voices. I don't know what it is - I've often wondered - that makes your voice such a - haunting memory. . . . Do you remember that first afternoon we spent together at Kew Gardens? You were so surprised because I did not know the names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant for all your telling me. But whenever it is very fine and warm, and I see some bright colours - it's awfully strange - I hear your voice saying : "Geranium, marigold and verbena." And I feel those three words are all I recall of some forgotten, heavenly language. . . .
— Katherine Mansfield, A Dill Pickle
It was as Frank said: the Sparrow Sisters Nursery had quite a reputation. Sally told Henry about the Nursery that was now a landmark in the town. The plants that grew in tidy rows, the orchids that swayed delicately in the beautiful glass greenhouses, and the herbs and vegetables sown in knot gardens around the land were much in demand. Sorrel had planted a dense little Shakespeare garden as a tribute to her reading habits. The lavender, rosemary, roses and honeysuckle, clematis and pansies, creeping thyme and sage were not for sale in that garden, but Sorrel would re-create versions of it for clients whose big houses on the water needed the stamp of culture, even if their owners had little idea what their lovely gardens meant.
— Ellen Herrick, The Sparrow Sisters
The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery.
— Ellen Herrick, The Sparrow Sisters
Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers.The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.
— Ellen Herrick, The Sparrow Sisters
Some flowers blush sensing their own beauty and the love they feel from us
— Brent M. Jones
There was something wonderful about the atmosphere at Stony Cross Park. One could easily imagine it as some magical place set in some far-off land. The surrounding forest was so deep and thick as to be primeval in appearance, while the twelve-acre garden behind the manor seemed too perfect to be real. There were groves, glades, ponds, and fountains. It was a garden of many moods, alternating tranquility with colorful tumult. A disciplined garden, every blade of grass precisely clipped, the corners of the box hedges trimmed to knife blade crispness. Hatless, gloveless, and infused with a sudden sense of optimism, Annabelle breathed deeply of the country air. She skirted the edge of the terraced gardens at the back of the manor and followed a graveled path set between raised beds of poppies and geraniums. The atmosphere soon became thick with the perfume of flowers, as the path paralleled a drystone wall covered with tumbles of pink and cream roses.Wandering more slowly, Annabelle crossed through an orchard of ancient pear trees, sculpted by decades into fantastic shapes. Farther off, a canopy of silver birch led to woodland beds that appeared to melt seamlessly into the forest beyond.
— Lisa Kleypas, Secrets of a Summer Night
And then there was the expansive garden that ran the length of the rear of the house- lush with color and fragrances that seemed to burst from every branch and bloom. Whoever had designed it possessed a keen eye for beauty, each plant chosen with obvious care and an affinity for nature.She'd even acquired a new cat from its depths, a stray orange tom she found wandering among the hydrangea bushes one morning. An offered dish of milk and he'd been her bosom beau ever since. She'd decided to call him Ranunculus because Buttercup was far too feminine a name for such a large and impressive male. She gazed at him now where he slept in the sunshine, basking like a small potentate in the heat of the day.
— Tracy Anne Warren, Seduced By His Touch
She closed her eyes and listened to the drone of bees as they moved lazily among the flowering bursts of deep pink hydrangea and delicate tendrils of sweet pea that wound through the basket-bed borders. Although she was still very weak, it was pleasant to sit in warm lethargy, half-drowsing like a cat.She was slow to respond when she heard a sound from the doorway... a single light rap, as if the visitor was reluctant to disrupt her reverie with a loud knock. Blinking her sun-dazzled eyes, Annabelle remained sitting with her legs tucked beneath her. The mass of light speckles gradually faded from her vision, and she found herself staring at Simon Hunt's dark, lean form. He had leaned part of his weight on the doorjamb, bracing a shoulder against it in an unselfconsciously rakish pose. His head was slightly tilted as he considered her with an unfathomable expression.Annabelle's pulse escalated to a mad clatter. As usual, Hunt was dressed impeccably, but the gentlemanly attire did nothing to disguise the virile energy that seemed to emanate from him. She recalled the hardness of his arms and chest as he had carried her, the touch of his hands on her body... oh, she would never be able to look at him again without remembering!"You look like a butterfly that's just flown in from the garden," Hunt said softly.
— Lisa Kleypas, Secrets of a Summer Night
i will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowersI will take the sun in my mouthand leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyesto dash against darkness in the sleeping curves of my bodyShall enter fingers of smooth masterywith chasteness of sea-girls Will i complete the mystery of my fleshI will rise After a thousand yearslippingflowers And set my teeth in the silver of the moon
— E.E. Cummings
Flowers are always more serious than they appear.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home
Flowers enshrine my heart between their petals
—  that's why my heartbeats love them so much
Wildflowers don't grow haphazardly us we are led to believe. They grow in fantastic patterns which are different to each of us you see.
— Anthony T.Hnicks
At the edge of the lot, wildflowers had taken over, forming a thick border. I stopped to pick a bouquet of gold buttercups and yellow-and-white oxeye daisies. I plucked a sprig of Queen Anne's lace and watched a black swallowtail butterfly land on a branch of goldenrod. Then I stretched and took a deep breath. The air was mellow and sweet.
— Mary Simses, The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe
French toast? Frittata?Definitely frittata.Leaving the table again, she transferred a small packet from freezer to fridge. It was salmon, home-smoked on the island and more delicious than any she had ever found elsewhere. Smoked salmon wasn't Cecily's doing, but the dried basil and thyme she took from the herb rack were. Taking a vacuum-sealed package of sun-dried tomatoes from the cupboard, she set it on the counter beside the herbs. Frittata, hot biscuits, and fruit salad. With mimosas. And coffee. That sounded right. Eaten out on the deck maybe?No, not on the deck, unless the prevailing winds turned suddenly warm.They would eat here in the kitchen, with whatever flowers the morning produced. Surely more lavender. A woman could never have enough lavender- or daylilies or astilbe, neither of which should bloom this early, but both of which had looked further along than the lavender, yesterday morning, so you never knew.
— Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air
Perched up on salvaged bricks, the half-pipes made perfect planters with an industrial edge that oddly complemented Sugar's pretty favorites: pansies, lantana, verbena and heliotrope.She laid two of them by the long wall of the taller building next door and planted a clematis vine at one end and a moonflower vine at the other: the clematis because the variety she picked had the prettiest purple bloom and the moonflower because it opened in the early evening and emanated a heavenly scent just when a person most felt like smelling one.
— Sarah-Kate Lynch, The Wedding Bees: A Novel of Honey, Love, and Manners
The estate looked vast and prosperous- on the surface, at least. Bella Vista was stunningly lovely, the orchards well tended and clearly productive. If there was a place in the world that was closer to heaven, she wasn't aware of it. Bella Vista- Beautiful View. A panorama view of the orchards, herb and flower fields radiated outward from the patio. The scents of ripe apples, lavender and roses rode the breeze, mingling with the mind-melting aroma of Isabel's fresh-baked croissants.
— Susan Wiggs, The Apple Orchard
Sugar had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina: possibly the most luscious of the world's garden cities. Behind every wrought-iron gate or exposed-brick wall in the picturesque peninsula blooming between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers lay a sweet-scented treasure trove of camellias, roses, gardenias, magnolias, tea olives, azaleas and jasmine, everywhere, jasmine.With its lush greenery, opulent vines, sumptuous hedgerows and candy-colored window boxes, it was no wonder the city's native sons and daughters believed it to be the most beautiful place on earth.In her first years of exile Sugar had tried to cultivate a reminder of the luxuriant garden delights she had left behind, struggling in sometimes hostile elements to train reluctant honeysuckle and sulky sweet potato vines or nurture creeping jenny and autumn stonecrop.
— Sarah-Kate Lynch, The Wedding Bees: A Novel of Honey, Love, and Manners
The bougainvillea hung about it, purple and magenta, in livid balloons.
— Anita Desai, Games at Twilight
Gnats drifted on the same warm summer breeze that saw colorful paper lanterns swaying on their strings. Lily of the valley filled jam jars at each table, but sweet peas had won out in the battle to fragrance the evening air.
— Anouska Knight, Since You've Been Gone
It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry, wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy.Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realized, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about sixteen feet high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting readyto break my heartas the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingersand they open —pools of lace, white and pink —and all day the black ants climb over them,boring their deep and mysterious holesinto the curls, craving the sweet sap, taking it awayto their dark, underground cities —and all dayunder the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holdingall that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagernessto be wild and perfect for a moment, before they arenothing, forever?
— Mary Oliver
From golden showers of the ancient skies,On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars,You once unfastened giant calyxesFor the young earth still innocent of scars:Young gladioli with the necks of swans,Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream,Vermilion as the modesty of dawnsTrod by the footsteps of the seraphim;The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright,And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose,Hérodiade blooming in the garden light,She that from wild and radiant blood arose!And made the sobbing whiteness of the lilyThat skims a sea of sighs, and as it wendsThrough the blue incense of horizons, palelyToward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!Hosanna on the lute and in the censers,Lady, and of our purgatorial groves!Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer,Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom,Formed calyxes balancing the future flask,Capacious flowers with the deadly balsamFor the weary poet withering on the husk.
— Stéphane Mallarmé
Still single today?? No worries.. keep love in your heart, a life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead, the consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring... (Ejump,2017)
— ejump - 2017
Every flower begins to flourish in spring.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Daffodils are yellow trumpets of spring
— Richard L.  Ratliff
One character all messages had in common was vague generality. "Fly away with me," a tussie-mussie might suggest, but never "Meet me at the railway depot at six-thirty.
— Geraldine Adamich Laufer, Tussie-Mussies: The Victorian Art of Expressing Yourself in the Language of Flowers
That's oak leaf, for bravery. I've got Veronica and Honeysuckle, for fidelity and affection. And that's Peony, for shame. She lives under this rock.""Did you make that up by yourself?""'Course not. That's the language of flowers. Everyone knows that.""No, they don't. I don't.""Everyone used to know. They sent each other messages. Like Bluebells means, 'I'll always love you' and Jasmine means 'We're friends.' and Asphodels... Asphodels are for the dead.
— Neil Gaiman, Free Country: A Tale of The Children's Crusade
The Origin of VioletsI know, blue modest violets,Gleaming with dew at morn-I know the place you come fromAnd the way that you are born!When God cut holes in Heaven,The holes the stars look through,He let the scraps fall down to earth,-The little scraps are you.
— Anonymous
The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. 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-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Shall I tell you the secret of true love? her father once asked her. A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why? Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother’s porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums.That’s Mama! Inej had cried.Yes, Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same color, and she claims that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer. Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you’ll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won’t matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.
— Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
Protect your garden. Some come as weeds disguised as flowers.
— Erica Alex
Are those chocolate chip?'' Cole reaches her first and claims one.''Oh, my godness.'' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. ''Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.''''River did it.'' Cole smirks at the guy. ''And he insulted my mom. And my dad.''''River Marks.'' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. ''How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!''River glares at Cole before bowing his head. ''I'm sorry, Nana.''''The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.'' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. ''Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.'' ''Yes, ma'am,'' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar.''Good, good.'' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. ''I'll leave you kids to your practice.'' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves.''Are you a rose?'' River sneers at Cole. ''Or a lilly?''''Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.'' Cole responds.
— Gena Showalter, A Mad Zombie Party
One must also have faith to grow flowers...
— Stella Walthal Patterson, Dear Mad'm
A great perfumer can take the visual perfection of living flowers and materials and elongate and morph it's lifespann into olfactory bliss.
— Marian Bendeth Global Fragrance Expert, Sixth Scents
I’m not going to be part of this,” said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina’s salvaged-wood floors.
— Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. the World
A great perfumer can take the visual perfection of living flowers and materials and elongate and morph it's lifespan into olfactory bliss.
— Marian Bendeth Global Fragrance Expert, Sixth Scents
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, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning Men from Rot to Rock
Love is wild; its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers.
— Osho, Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other
Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him. (letter from Oscar Wilde, 1892 - quoted from Love in a dark time by Colm Toibin)
— Oscar Wilde
Nothing...They're from nothing,' he said. 'They came in the book...I found the book and inside were these flowers...They were in the book when I bought it... I bought it used...Because they meant something."'To someone else.' 'To someone.
— Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories
A man should smell of sweat, not flowers.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell them
—  people never get the flowers while they can still smell them.
A flowing stream waters the flowers.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Every flower can flourish with fertile soil and water.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet.
— Hannah Hurnard
In your Curled petals what ghosts Of blue headlands and seas, What perfumed immortal breath sighing Of Greece.
— Adelaide Crapsey, Verse by Adelaide Crapsey
Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets.
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
I'll catch any rose in my vase-shaped heart, then process it through my vascular system, until there's nothing left.
— Will Advise, Nothing is here...
What makes it smell so sweet?" they wanted to know. "Because everything,--every little wild plum-blossom, every little tiny crocus and anemone and violet and every tree-bud and grass-blade is working to help make the prairie nice.
— Bess Streeter Aldrich, Lantern in Her Hand
Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower
— Mya Robarts
Where flowers bloom so does hope.
— Lady Bird Johnson
I dream of a small room and a man with one eye. Blood seeps like scarlet tears from his empty socket. I turn away and the room becomes a hallway that becomes a stairway that becomes a roof. The wind tugs at my body; the sky tries to wrap me in stars. Below me, a gazebo glows with red light. A line of black cars crawls like cockroaches through the streets. An air conditioner exhaust fan chitters angrily near the roof’s edge, one of its blades bent just enough to scrape against the side of the casing. For a second I let the wind push me close enough to the fan’s razor- sharp blades that a lock of my hair gets snipped and sent out into the night. As it twists and flutters toward the gazebo, I think about just letting go, letting the breeze carry my body into the whirling blades, the wind scattering pieces of me throughout the city. Blood and flesh seeping into the cracked pavement. Flowers blooming wherever I land.
— Paula Stokes, Vicarious
The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the greek, its top cutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night. or rather early morning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adored it. The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom;then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-rosins, daffodils and so on, till the lowest stage was reached.Thomasin noticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be so near.
— Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
There are two types of women. The ones who wait to receive flowers and the ones who go out and pick them.
— A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers
Tropical trees had been planted throughout the room, along with bright flowering plants that were busy committing the olfactory floral equivalent of aggravated assault.
— Jim Butcher, Skin Game
For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.
— Bryn  Hammond, Amgalant One: The Old Ideal
Roses," she thought sardonically, "All trash, m’dear.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
I presented my feminine side with flowers. She cutthe stems and placed them gently down my throat.And these tu lips might soon eclipse your brightesthopes.
— Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop
The scent of flowers is the glory of gardens and the scent of art is the glory of Paris!
— Mehmet Murat ildan