Florilegium

If it pleased the whim of Zeus in an idle
Hour to choose a king for the flowers, he surely
Would have crowned the rose for its regal beauty,
Deeming it peerless;
   ~ Sappho

Joy and pride of plants, and the garden's glory,
Beauty's blush it brings to the cheek of meadows;
Draining fire and dew from the dawn for rarest
Color and odor;
   ~ Sappho

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
  ~ Emerson

The earth has music for those who listen.
  ~ William Shakespeare

The Amen of nature is always a flower.
  ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Nature is loved by what is best in us.
  ~ Emerson

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
  ~ Walt Whitman

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.
  ~ Walt Whitman

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.
  ~ Walt Whitman

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
  ~ Henry David Thoreau

How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.
  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.
  ~ Emerson

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
  ~ Emerson

Nature is frank to him whose spirit whole
Doth love Truth more than praise, and in good time,
My flower will tell me sweeter things to rhyme.
  ~ James Russell Lowell

A life well spent is like a flower,
That had bright sunshine its brief hour;
It flourished in pure willingness;
  ~ William Ellery Channing

Frolic, sweet flowers, along the wall-side,
  ~ William Ellery Channing

Is the secret of these things known to you?
Can you tell what gives the flower its hue?
  ~ Caroline Tappan

The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,
For I am known to them, both great and small;
The flowers that on the lovely hillside grow ...
And many a tree and bush my wanderings know.
  ~ Jones Very

Thou winged blossom, liberated thing,
What secret tie binds thee to other flowers?
  ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

And the little joy of the child who plants a seed and sees himself instrumental in the creation of a flower, forcibly reminds us of that beneficence which built the heavens and the earth, and saw that it was good.
  ~ Emerson

God has peopled [his universe] with images of himself, and kindled within them the light of his own understanding .... there are hills and waters, trees and flowers, the living forms of nature and the stars of the firmament; — but ... there is no eye and voice within them to detect and declare the stupendous glory which surrounds them ... without which the Universe is as if it were not, and the glory of Deity is darkness.
  ~ Emerson

In God's own order, and by my concurrent effort, can I get the abstract sense of which mountains, sunshine, thunders, night, birds and flowers are the sublime alphabet.
  ~ Emerson

No man ever grew so learned as to exhaust the significance of any part of nature.
  ~ Emerson

The oldest naturalist sees something new in every walk.
  ~ Emerson

ALL things in nature are beautiful types to the soul that can read them;
Nothing exists upon earth, but for unspeakable ends,
Every object that speaks to the senses was meant for the spirit;
Nature is but a scroll; God's handwriting thereon.
  ~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

So through the symbol-alphabet that glows
Through all creation, higher still and higher,
The spirit builds its faith, and ever grows.
  ~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

DEAR flower of heaven and love! Thou glorious thing!
  ~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

Was it some angel on invisible wing
Hovered around thy fragrant sleep, to fling
His glowing mantle of warm sunset hues
O'er thy unfolding petals, wet with dews?
  ~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

The world, the universe, is a gigantic flower.
  ~ Emerson

The stars tell all their secrets to the flowers, and, if we only knew how to look around us, we should not need to look above. But man is a plant of slow growth, and great heat is required to bring out his leaves. He must be promised a boundless futurity, to induce him to use aright the present hour. In youth, fixing his eyes on those distant worlds of light, he promises himself to attain them, and there find the answer to all his wishes. His eye grows keener as he gazes, a voice from the earth calls it downward, and he finds all at his feet.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

We have pure intercourse with these purest creations; we love them for their own sake, for their beauty's sake. As we grow beautiful and pure, we understand them better.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

Flowers are the only positive present made us by nature.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

There is not a flower in my native region, which has not for me a tale, to which every year is adding new incidents.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

Botany had never touched our true knowledge of our favorite flower, but a symphony displays the same attitude and hues.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

Does any one look on beauty with the bodily eye alone? that degrades; it is the lust of the eye, brings sin and death. But to him who looks with the eye of the soul also, every form in which beauty appears is religious, and casts some flower upon the altar of intelligence.
  ~ Margaret Fuller

he undisturbed presence and unobstructed influence of God, amid the hills and flower-enamelled meadows of the country, are more congenial to the growth of morality and religion, than the close contact of self-conscious men in crowded towns.
  ~ Theodore Parker

The highest science is that, “which treats of, and practically addresses the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of love, and fear, and wonder, and enthusiasm, poetry, religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character.” For this culture the spirit of man has its own exhaustless resources within, and the material creation speaks to it in thousand-voiced prophecy. The heavens and the earth, the stars and the flowers, the winds and the waves, all that is seen, and felt, and heard, contain revelations.
  ~ J. A. Saxton

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me.
  ~ Henry David Thoreau