101 Unforgettable Flower Quotes
Flowers are like miracles that grow out of the ground on delicate green stems. They hail the coming of spring and also remind us that life is sometimes short and always precious due to their short lifespans. It might be said that we’d stop and smell the flowers more if we were reminded that flowers spend only a couple of months a year with us before they sink their heads back into the ground for another winter season. As such, we’ve collected each of the 101 flower quotes on this list to inspire you, to make you chuckle, and to make you appreciate the fleeting beauty of flowers and life.
Short Flower Quotes
When you need a quick, sweet sentiment to add to a bouquet of flowers or a quick thank-you note, few quotes fit the bill as nicely as short flower quotes do. The following quotes will inspire you in the same way that all flower quotes do, but will do so in a shorter amount of time. While brevity may, indeed, be the soul of wit, it’s also the soul of beauty sometimes, and these flower quotes capture that idea in a short and sweet way.
- “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.” — Lady Bird Johnson
- “A flower blossoms for its own joy.” – Oscar Wilde
- “The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “The earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.” — Robert Leighton
- “Flowers grow out of dark moments.” — Corita Kent
- “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke
- “One by one she slew her fears and then planted a flower garden over their graves.” ― John Mark Green
- “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” — Helen Keller
- “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
- “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” — Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
- “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” — Audrey Hepburn
- “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” — Henri Matisse
Wise Flower Quotes
It has been said that when Queen Elizabeth needed to clear her head, she often went talking in her gardens. No doubt, the time away from her pressing duties, as well as the chance to be around the beauty of the flowers, calmed her nerves and gave her the wisdom she needed to make difficult decisions. In this section, we offer you some flower quotes that will make you wiser and, therefore, better able to meet each of life’s challenges as they come to you.
- “A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.” – Ruth Brown
- “Don’t let the tall weeds cast a shadow on the beautiful flowers in your garden.” — Steve Maraboli
- “In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.” ― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea
- “What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure, but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.” – Joseph Addison
- “If you tend to a flower, it will bloom, no matter how many weeds surround it.” — Matshona Dhliwayo
- “I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world.” — Christian Dior
- “A flower’s appeal is in its contradictions—so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect.” — Terri Guillemets
- “Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots.” — Shannon Mullen
- “Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” – Hans Christian Andersen
- “I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.” ― Herbert Rappaport
- “Minds are like flowers; they open only when the time is right.” — Stephen Richards
Inspirational Flower Quotes
When motivation runs low, some people turn to inspirational posters to get their groove back, while others turn to trusted advisors and friends. Sadly, few think about turning to something as simple as flowers for inspiration. And yet, no sight is quite as welcome as a flower peeking its head out of the dirt at the end of winter. It reminds us why we live, why we love, and why we choose to get up one more time than we fall. If you find yourself in the doldrums, ponder these inspirational flower quotes to get yourself back into the groove.
- “No matter how chaotic it is, wildflowers will still spring up in the middle of nowhere.” — Sheryl Crow
- “Love is like wildflowers; it’s often found in the most unlikely places.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones.” – Forbes Watson
- “We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different for ourselves.” — Gwendolyn Brooks
- “When admiring other people’s gardens, don’t forget to tend to your own flowers.” ― Sanober Khan
- “You’re frustrated because you keep waiting for the blooming of flowers of which you have yet to sow the seeds.” – Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
- “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander Den Heijer
- “Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” – Sigmund Freud
- “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.” — Pablo Neruda
- “Every flower must grow through dirt.” — Laurie Jean Sennott
- “If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.” – Andrew Mason
- “The first wildflower of the year is like land after sea.” – Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- “Flowers grow back, even after they are stepped on. So will I.” — Unknown
- “The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions.” – Chanakya
- “To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.” – Beverly Nichols
- “Like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.” ―E.V.
- “Flowers whisper ‘Beauty!’ to the world, even as they fade, wilt, fall.” — Dr. SunWolf
- “Some women feel the need to act like they’re never scared, needy, or hurt like they’re as hardened as a man. I think that’s dishonest. It’s okay to feel delicate sometimes. Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.” – Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading 3
Rosy Flower Quotes
When it comes to collecting beautiful flower quotes, so popular are roses that they belong in a category all their own. Roses denote love, friendship, and purity, depending on their color. They even inspired Shakespeare to leave behind a famous line about a rose by any other name still smelling as sweet. To honor this special flower, we’ve created a list of flower quotes specifically about roses. May they leave a stunning fragrance in your memory and your heart.
- “The rose is the flower and handmaiden of love—the lily, her fair associate, is the emblem of beauty and purity.” — Dorothea Dix
- “I don’t know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice.” – Roland A. Browne
- “If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” ― Therese of Lisieux
- “True friendship is like a rose: we don’t realize its beauty until it fades.” – Evelyn Loeb
- “A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring.” – The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams
- “A rose can never be a sunflower, and a sunflower can never be a rose. All flowers are beautiful in their own way, and that’s like women too.” — Miranda Kerr
- “It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
- “If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.” — Isaac Hayes
- “Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.” — Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns
- “Always grow flowers, as that will make your way full of flowers. Never grow thorns, as that will make your way thorny. Never want to target someone on an arrow. You may become the target of that arrow. Never make a well in the way of someone. As you may pass by that way sometime.” – Rahman Baba
- “You can’t choose to adore the flower and ignore the thorns. Love means loving every part of them, especially the unlovable parts.” ― Sarvesh Jain
Poignant Flower Quotes
Because the lifespan of flowers is finite, people often use them as a metaphor for the fleetingness of life. They remind us to enjoy the fragrant blooms of today’s flowers because tomorrow, we’ll be pressing their petals between the pages of our scrapbooks. These quotes capture the fleeting and poignant nature of flowers and the metaphors they bring to our lives.
- “All the flowers of the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” — Indian Proverb
- “Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them.” — Chinese Proverb
- “Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.” – The Koran
- “The very best relationship has a gardener and a flower. The gardener nurtures, and the flower blooms.” — Carole Radziwill
- “He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower, and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.” — Gemma Malley, The Declaration
- “You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” — Walter Hagen
- “Love is like dried flowers sometimes. Even though you watch the petals shrink and change colour, you cannot help treasuring them.” ― Munia Khan
- “If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden.” — Claudia Adrienne Grandi
- “Every flower withers. What matters is how proudly it stood before the sun.” ― Marty Rubin
- “I’d rather wear flowers in my hair than diamonds around my neck.” — Unknown
- “I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!” – Elizabeth Gaskell
- “When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.” – Chinese Proverb
- “The flower fades that is not looked upon.” – Edward Counsel
- “I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.” – Audrey Hepburn
- “Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” — Luther Burbank
- “Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet. All last winter, we slept in the seeming death, but at the right time, God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you.” – Edward Payson Rod
- “Little things seem nothing, but they give peace like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.” – Georges Bernanos
Romantic Flower Quotes
Flowers often wind up in poems about love because both love and flowers possess a certain beauty that is as delicate as a sweet scent on the wind and as strong as an oak tree with deep roots. Romantic flower quotes remind us of the balance required to keep love both soft as the breeze and as strong as an oak.
- “Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.” – Jeremy Bentham
- “Pick a flower on Earth, and you move the farthest star.” – Paul A.M. Dirac
- “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” – Iris Murdoch
- “Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.” – Orison Swett Marden
- “The temple bell stops, but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.” – Basho
- “The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.” – Gertrude S. Wister
- “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.” – Tennessee Williams
- “The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.” – Auguste Rodin
- “Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.” – G.K. Chesterton
- “What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven.” – A.J. Balfour
- “Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.” – Lydia M. Child
Humorous Flower Quotes
Humorous flower quotes may not bring the belly laugh that goofy quotes about the quirky habits that married couples endure or the darnedest things that kids say. Instead, funny flower quotes offer us a gentle, sometimes thought-provoking chuckle in the middle of a hectic day that lasts longer than many other kinds of jokes do, precisely because we don’t expect the kind of laughter that can only come from flowers.
- “Butterflies are not insects,’ Captain John Sterling said soberly. ‘They are self-propelled flowers.” – Robert A. Heinlein
- “Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.” – Heinrich Heine
- “Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy.” – Robert G. Ingersoll
- “Flowers are the Romeos and the Juliets of the nature!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
- “She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…” – Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
- “Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together, drawing them from their homes.” – Clare Ansberry
- “To pick a flower is so much more satisfying than just observing it, or photographing it … So in later years, I have grown in my garden as many flowers as possible for children to pick.” – Anne Scott-James
- “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta
- “It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” – Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty – a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
Philosophical Flower Quotes
When it comes time to meditate on life a bit, it’s only natural that we’d want a subject that will provide us with a starting point for our meditations. Flowers, due to their ephemeral natures, are logical for such endeavors. They remind us that life is fleeting and time is precious. When you’re looking for some quotes to meditate on, these philosophical flower quotes will get you started.
- “Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.” – May Sarton
- “Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” – Brian Jacques, Taggerung
- “The flowers take the tears of weeping night and give them to the sun for day’s delight.” – Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.
- “Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
- “Everyone mourns the first blossom. Who will grieve the rest who fall?” – Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars
- “What this old world needs is more bouquets handed around to folks when they are alive and kicking. Flowers don’t do a dead one much good.” – Robert Elliot Gonzales
- “A flower knows when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand; but now it hurts to watch you leave so soon when I don’t know if you will ever come back.” – Sanober Khan
- “Sometimes, I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.” – Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness
- “It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ” – Colette
- “In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.” – Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
Unforgettable Flower Quotes – Wrapping Up
Flowers, in their fleeting beauty, have inspired poets, writers, and thinkers across ages and cultures. The best flower quotes encapsulate the essence of life’s special moments, the hope that springs eternal, and the beauty that can be found in the everyday. Whether they serve to comfort, inspire, or simply remind us of nature’s splendor, these sayings touch our souls in a profound way. Just as flowers bloom, wilt, and bloom again, these quotes remind us of the cyclical nature of life, the importance of appreciating every moment, and the promise of renewal. In the vast garden of human expression, flower quotes stand out as some of the most poignant and timeless.
For more, see our favorite quotes about roses.
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