“Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.”
Mark Overby
“You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.”
Victor Hugo
“But he that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.”
Anne Bronte
“LIFE is a mosaic of pleasure and pain - grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower. There is no bee without the sting; cleverness consists in gathering the honey nevertheless.”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba
“She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.”
Marquis De Sade
"It is at the edge of the petal that love waits."
William Carlos Williams
"The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a Rose, For me it is my heart."
Frederick Peterson 1859-1938
"A rose is a rose is a rose."
Gertrude Stein
"A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring."
William Carlos Williams
"And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies."
Christopher Marlowe
"Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you."
Richard B Sheridan 1751-1816
"Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing."
William Butler Yeats
"The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But the theory now goes That the apple’s a rose."
Robert Frost
"Their lips were four red roses on a stalk."
Shakespeare
"Oh, my luve’s like a red, red rose, That ’s newly sprung in June; Oh, my luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune."
Robert Burns
"The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove."
John Boyle O’Reilly
"Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time."
Edmund Spenser
"When love first came to Earth,the Spring spread rose-beds to receive him."
Thomas Campbell
She wore a wreath of roses,
The night that first we met.
- Thomas Haynes Bayly (Bayley),
She Wore a Wreath of Roses
The rose that all are praising
Is not the rose for me.
- Thomas Haynes Bayly (Bayley),
The Rose That all are Praising
Go pretty rose, go to my fair,
Go tell her all I fain would dare,
Tell her of hope; tell her of spring,
Tell her of all I fain would sing,
Oh! were I like thee, so fair a thing.
- Michael Beverly, Go Pretty Rose
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
- Bible, Wisdom of Solomon (Apocrypha)
(ch. II, v. 8)
He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.
- Bidpai (Pilpay), The Ignorant Physician
(fable viii)
There is no gathering the rose without being pricked by the thorns.
- Bidpai (Pilpay), The Two Travellers
(chap. ii, fable vi)
Thus to the Rose, the Thistle:
Why art thou not of thistle-breed?
Of use thou'dst, then, be truly,
For asses might upon thee feed.
- Friedrich M. von Bodenstedt,
The Rose and Thistle,
(translated from the German by Frederick Ricord)
A sunbeam warm'd thee into bloom;
A zephyr's kiss thy blushes gave:
The tears of ev'ning shed perfume,
And morn will beam upon thy grave.
How like to thee, thou transient flower,
The doom of all we love on earth;
Beauty, like thee, but decks an hour,
Decay feeds on it from its birth.
- Henry G. Bohn
If on creation's morn the king of heaven
To shrubs and flowers a sovereign lord had given,
O beauteous rose, he had anointed thee
Of shrubs and flowers the sovereign lord to be;
The spotless emblem of unsullied truth,
The smile of beauty and the glow of youth,
The garden's pride, the grace of vernal bowers,
The blush of meadows, and the eye of flowers.
- Henry G. Bohn
The full-blown rose, mid dewy sweets
Most perfect dies.
- Maria Brooks, Written on Seeing Pharamond
O rose, who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,--
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Dead Rose
And thus, what can we do,
Poor rose and poet too,
Who both antedate our mission
In an unprepared season?
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
A Lay of the Early Rose
"For if I wait," said she,
"Till time for roses be,--
For the moss-rose and the musk-rose,
Maiden-blush and royal-dusk rose,--
"What glory then for me
In such a company?--
Roses plenty, roses plenty
And one nightingale for twenty?"
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
A Lay of the Early Rose
This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck
Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
(bk. II)
'Twas a yellow rose,
By that south window of the little house,
My cousin Romney gathered with his hand
On all my birthdays, for me. save the last;
And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,
For roses to stay after.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
(bk. VI)
Red as a rose of Harpocrate.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Isabel's Child
You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it, what matter?
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Lord Walter's Wife
A white rosebud for a guerdon.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Romance of the Swan's Nest
Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.
- Robert Browning
All June I bound the rose in sheaves,
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves.
- Robert Browning, One Way of Love
The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
- William Cullen Bryant
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
- William Cullen Bryant,
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phoebus peeps in view,
For its like a baumy kiss o'er her sweet bonnie mou'!
- Robert Burns, The Posie
Yon rose-buds in the morning-dew,
How pure amang the leaves sae green!
- Robert Burns, To Chloris
When love came first to earth, the Spring
Spread rose-beds to receive him.
- Thomas Campbell,
Song--When Love Came First to Earth
For those roses bright, oh, those roses bright!
I have twined them in my sister's locks
That are hid in the dust from sight.
- Phoebe Cary
Roses were sette of sweete savour,
With many roses that thei here.
- Geoffrey Chaucer
Rose were sette of swete savour,
With many roses that thei bere.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose
I am not the rose, but I have lived near the rose.
[Fr., Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j'ai vecu pres d'elle.]
- attributed to Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque,
by Hayward in "Introduction to Letter of Mrs. Piozzi"
Till the rose's lips grow pale
With her sighs.
- Rose Terry Cooke, Reve Du Midi
I wish I might a rose-bud grow
And thou wouldst cull me from the bower.
To place me on that breast of snow
Where I should bloom a wintry flower.
- Dionysius of Chalcus
A wreath of dewy roses, fresh and sweet, just brought from out the garden's cool retreat.
- Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr
O beautiful, royal Rose,
O Rose, so fair and sweet!
Queen of the garden art thou,
And I--the Clay at thy feet!
. . . .
Yet, O thou beautiful Rose!
Queen rose, so fair and sweet,
What were lover or crown to thee
Without the Clay at thy feet?
- Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr,
The Clay to the Rose
Blown roses hold their sweetness to the last.
- John Dryden
It never rains roses; when we want more roses, we must plant more trees.
- George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)
You love the roses--so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valleys would be pink and white,
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once.
Over the sea, Queen, where we soon shall go,
Will it rain roses?
- George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)
It never will rain roses: when we want
To have more roses we must plant more trees.
- George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross),
The Spanish Gypsy (bk. III)
The gathered rose and the stolen heart can charm but for a day.
- Emma Catherine Embury
Oh, raise your deep-fringed lids that close
To wrap you in some sweet dream's thrall;
I am the spectre of the rose
You wore but last night at the ball.
- Pierre Jules Theophile Gautier,
Spectre of the Rose, from the French
In Heaven's happy bowers
There blossom two flowers,
One with fiery glow
And one as white as snow;
While lo! before them stands,
With pale and trembling hands,
A spirit who must choose
One, and one refuse.
- Richard Watson Gilder,
The White and Red Rose
Gather roses while they bloom,
To-morrow is yet far away.
Moments lost have no room
In to-morrow or to-day.
[Ger., Pflucke Rosen, weil sie bluhn,
Morgen ist nicht heut!
Keine Stunde lass entfliehn.
Morgen ist nicht heut.]
- Johann William Ludwig Gleim,
Benutzung der Zeit
The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is written on the rose
In its glory's full array:
Read what those buds disclose--
"Passing away."
- Mrs. Felicia D. Hemans, Passing Away
Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is even in the grave,
And thou must die.
- George Herbert, Vertue (st. 2)
Roses at first were white.
'Till they co'd not agree,
Whether my Sappho's breast
Or they more white sho'd be.
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides,
found in Dodd's "Epigrammatists"
But ne'er the rose without the thorn.
- Robert Herrick, The Rose
He came and took me by the hand,
Up to a red rose tree,
He kept His meaning to Himself,
But gave a rose to me.
I did not pray Him to lay bare
The mystery to me,
Enough the rose was Heaven to smell,
And His own face to see.
- Ralph Hodgson, The Mystery
It was not in the winter
Our loving lot was cast:
It was the time of roses
We pluck'd them as we pass'd.
- Thomas Hood,
Ballad--It was not in the Winter
Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street
Till--think of that who find life so sweet!--
She hates the smell of roses!
- Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg
And the guelder rose
In a great stillness dropped, and ever dropped,
Her wealth about her feet.
- Jean Ingelow, Laurance (pt. III)
The roses that in yonder hedge appear
Outdo our garden-buds which bloom within;
But since the hand may pluck them every day,
Unmarked they bud, bloom, drop, and drift away.
- Jean Ingelow, The Four Bridges (st. 61)
Mild May's eldest child, the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
- John Keats (1)
The vermeil rose had blown
In frightful scarlet, and its thorns outgrown
Like spiked aloe.
- John Keats (1), Endymion (bk. I, l. 694)
But the rose leaves herself upon the brier,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed.
- John Keats (1), On Fame
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
- Omar Khayyam ("The Tent-Maker"),
The Rubaiyat, (FitzGerald's translation)
Woo on, with odour wooing me,
Faint rose with fading core;
For God's rose-thought, that blooms in thee,
Will bloom forevermore.
- George MacDonald,
Songs of the Summer Night (pt. III)
But she bloomed on earth, where the most beautiful things have the saddest destiny;
And rose, she lived as live the roses, for the space of a morning.
[Fr., Mais elle etait du mond, ou les plus belles choses
Ont le pire destin;
Et Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
L'espece d'un matin.]
- Francois de Malherbe,
in a letter of condolence to M. du Perrier on the loss of his daughter
And I will make the beds of roses.
- Christopher Marlowe
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies.
- Christopher Marlowe,
The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
(st. 3),
said to be written by Shakespeare and Marlowe
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
(bk. IV, l. 256)
Rose of the desert! thou art to me
An emblem of stainless purity,--
Of those who, keeping their garments white,
Walk on through life with steps aright.
- David Macbeth Moir (known as Delta),
The White Rose
Two roses on one slender spray
In sweet communion grew,
Together hailed the morning ray
And drank the evening dew.
- James Montgomery, The Roses
While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue,
But coyly linger'd on the thorn.
- James Montgomery, The Roses
Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd!
Like the vase, in which roses have once been distill'd--
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
- Thomas Moore,
Farewell! but Whenever you Welcome the Hour
There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long,
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.
- Thomas Moore,
Lalla Rookh--The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
- Thomas Moore, Last Rose of Summer
'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone.
- Thomas Moore, Last Rose of Summer
What would the rose with all her pride be worth,
Were there no sun to call her brightness forth?
- Thomas Moore, Love Alone
Oh! there is naught in nature bright
Whose roses do not shed their light;
When morning paints the Orient skies,
Her fingers burn with roseate dyes.
- Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon--Ode LV
The rose distils a healing balm
The beating pulse of pain to calm.
- Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon--Ode LV
Rose! thou art the sweetest flower,
That ever drank the amber shower;
Rose! thou art the fondest child
Of dimpled Spring, the wood-nymph wild.
- Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon--Ode XLIV
Why do we shed the rose's bloom
Upon the cold, insensate tomb?
Can flowery breeze, or odor's breath,
Affect the slumbering chill of death?
- Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon--Ode XXXII
Rose of the Desert! Thus should woman be
Shining uncourted, lone and safe, like thee.
- Thomas Moore, Rose of the Desert
Rose of the Garden! such is woman's lot--
Worshipp'd while blooming--when she fades, forgot.
- Thomas Moore, Rose of the Desert
Sometimes, when on the Alpine rose
The golden sunset leaves its ray,
So like a gem the flow'ret glows,
We thither bend our headlong way;
And though we find no treasure there,
We bless the rose that shines so fair.
- Thomas Moore, The Crystal-Hunters
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, Anacreontic (st. 2)
The sweetest flower that blows,
I give you as we part
For you it is a rose
For me it is my heart.
- Frederick Peterson (used pseudonym Pai Ta-shun),
At Parting
There was never a daughter of Eve but once, ere the tale of her years be done,
Shall know the scent of the Eden Rose, but once beneath the sun;
Though the years may bring her joy or pain, fame, sorrow or sacrifice,
The hour that brought her the scent of the Rose, she lived it in Paradise.
- Susan K. Phillips, The Eden Rose,
quoted by Kipling in "Mrs. Hauksbee Sits it Out", published anonymously in St. Louis "Globe-Democrat", July 13, 1878
Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn,
And liquid amber drop from every thorn.
- Alexander Pope, Autumn (l. 36)
Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
- Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
(ep. I, l. 200)
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
- Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock
(canto IV, l. 158)
And when the parent-rose decays and dies,
With a resembling face the daughter-buds arise.
- Matthew Prior, Celia to Damon
Behold the glowing blush upon the rose.
- Thomas Buchanan Read
The rose
Propt at the cottage door with careful hands,
Bursts its green bud, and looks abroad for May.
- Thomas Buchanan Read
We bring roses, beautiful fresh roses,
Dewy as the morning and coloured like the dawn;
Little tents of odour, where the bee reposes,
Swooning in sweetness of the bed he dreams upon.
- Thomas Buchanan Read, The New Pastoral
(bk. VII, l. 51)
The rose does not bloom without thorns.
True: but would that the thorns did out outlive the rose.
[Ger., Die Rose bluht nicht ohne Dornen. Ja: wenn nur aber nicht die Dornen die Rose uberlebten.]
- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (Johann Paul Richter) (used ps. Jean Paul),
Titan (zykel 105)
The rose saith in the dewy morn,
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.
- Christina Georgina Rossetti,
Consider the Lilies of the Field
I watched a rose-bud very long
Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
Waiting to see the perfect flower:
Then when I thought it should be strong
It opened at the matin hour
And fell at even-song.
- Christina Georgina Rossetti, Symbols
The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.
- Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
(canto IV)
The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new.
- Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
(canto IV)
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
- William Shakespeare
O'ercanopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.
- William Shakespeare
The red rose on triumphant brier.
- William Shakespeare
The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.
- William Shakespeare
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set.
- William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Titania at II, i)
Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,
Of color like the red rose on triumphant brier,
Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew,
As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire,
I'll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny's tomb.
- William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Thisby at III, i)
Let him that is a true-born gentleman
And stands upon the honor of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
- William Shakespeare,
King Henry the Sixth, Part I
(Plantagenet, Duke of York at II, iv)
Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,
With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed,
And in my standard bear the arms of York
To grapple with the house of Lancaster;
And force perforce I'll make him yield the crown
Whose bookishrule hath pulled fair England down.
- William Shakespeare,
King Henry the Sixth, Part II
(Plantagenet, Duke of York at I, i)
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
(Juliet at II, ii)
'To shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious pirds sing madrigals;
There will we make our peds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies.
To shallow--'
- William Shakespeare,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
(Evans at III, i)
I do beseech you,
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,
What is your name?
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
(Ferdinand at III, i)
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air,
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant
(pt. I)
Should this fair rose offend thy sight,
Placed in thy bosom bare,
'Twill blush to find itself less white,
And turn Lancastrian there.
- James Somerville, The White Rose
It was nothing but a rose I gave her,--
Nothing but a rose
Any wind might rob of half its savor,
And wind that blows.
. . . .
Withered, faded, pressed between these page,
Crumpled, fold on fold,--
Once it lay upon her breast, and ages
Cannot make it old!
- Harriet Prescott Spofford, A Sigh
I am the one rich thing that morn
Leaves for the ardent noon to win;
Grasp me not, I have a thorn,
But bend and take my being in.
- Harriet Prescott Spofford,
Flower Songs--The Rose
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
- Gertrude Stein
The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
From the thin green leaf to the gold,
It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne,
The Year of the Rose
And half in shade and half in sun;
The Rose sat in her bower,
With a passionate thrill in her crimson heart.
- Bayard Taylor,
Poems of the Orient--The Poet in the East
(st. 5)
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?
- Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Day-Dream--Moral
The fairest things have fleetest end:
Their scent survives their close,
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose!
- Francis Thompson, Daisy (st. 10)
I saw the rose-grove blushing in pride,
I gathered the blushing rose--and sigh'd--
I come from the rose-grove, mother,
I come from the grove of roses.
- Gil Vicente,
I Come from the Rose-grove, Mother,
(translated by John Bowring)
The coming spring would first appear, and all this place with roses strew, if busy feet would let them grow.
- Edmund Waller
Go, lovely Rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows.
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
- Edmund Waller, The Rose
How fair is the Rose! what a beautiful flower.
The glory of April and May!
But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour,
And they wither and die in a day.
Yet the Rose has one powerful virtue to boast,
Above all the flowers of the field;
When its leaves are all dead, and fine colours are lost,
Still how sweet a perfume it will yield!
- Isaac Watts, The Rose
It's just life Quincy . . . wake up, smell the thorns.
- Jake Weber,
as the character Drew in the movie "Meet Joe Black"
The rosebuds lay their crimson lips together.
- Mrs. Amelia Ball Welby (nee Coppuck),
Hopeless Love (st. 5)
The smiles of God's goodness.
- Dr. Samuel Wilberforce
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
- Tom Wilson, from the "Ziggy" comic strip
Proud be the rose, with rain and dews her head impearling.
- William Wordsworth
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
- William Wordsworth
Far off, most secret, and invilate Rose.
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre
Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams.
- William Butler Yeats, The Secret Rose
“The splendor of the rose and the whitness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its lovliness.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
