#lowers

For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom. ↗

— Cao Yu

#expected #fallen #flowers #like #new

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#charles-baudelaire #the-flowers-of-evil #beauty

While Maddox now believed the demon did not want to hurt Ashlyn, he wasn't willing to take a chance. He would talk about flowers and moonbeams - he cringed - if it meant maintaining this delectable inner peace. "Is there a way to break your death-curse?" Ashlyn asked. So much for flowers and moon-beams. ↗

— Gena Showalter

#humor #lords-of-the-underworld #romance #death

There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last. She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the hyacinths and tuberoses exhaled their incense, wrapping her in a final sigh, so profound that it drowned the chorus of roses, and in this culminating gasp of blossom, Albine was dead. ↗

— Émile Zola

#flowers #love #death

But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligent and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn...Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love...Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. ↗

— Daniel Keyes

#flowers-for-algernon #intelligence #education

You’re frustrated because you keep waiting for the blooming of flowers of which you have yet to sow the seeds. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#flowers #frustration #life #seeds #success

A well-read woman is a dangerous creature. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#reading #wallflowers #women #humor

A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests. ↗

— Criss Jami

#conscious #control #controlled #effort #envy

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers. ↗

— May Sarton

#dark #flowers #life #life

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-Exupéry

#importance #longing #love #protection #roses