A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
How many million Aprils came before I ever knew how white a cherry bough could be, a bed of squills, how blue And many a dancing April when life is done with me, will lift the blue flame of the flower and the white flame of the tree Oh burn me with your beauty then, oh hurt me tree and flower, lest in the end death try to take even this glistening hour.
Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust, Your childhood is a bower: Let my fingers wander in the moss Where glows the rosebud Let me among the clean grasses Drink the drops of dew Which sprinkle the tender flower
You will notice already that Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.
It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light. I do not see why we should recognize a house, a tree, or a flower here below and not, for example, the red Arcturus up there in the heavens as it hangs from its constellation Bootes, like a basket hanging from a balloon.
Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty.
I think losing a loved one must be a little like losing a leg. First there is the shock, then the anesthetic, and the painkillers; the attention of doctors and nurses, flowers and cards and visits from friends. But sooner or later you have to learn to walk without it.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multiple OF golden chalices to humming birds And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
We waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into potions which, after all, do not immortalize, but only intoxicate.
Three things see no end- A flower blighted ere it bloomed, A message that was wasted, And a journey that was doomed.
I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds, The gray and wintry sides of many glens, And did but half remember human words, In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.
Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.
Happiness is within you. . . so unlock the chains from your heart and let yourself grow- like the sweet flower you are. I know the answer- just spread your wings and set yourself free.
When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you.
The wild-flower wreath of feeling, the sunbeam of the heart.
If you come to Plum Village in the summertime, you see many lotus flowers. Without the mud the lotus flowers cannot grow. You cannot separate lotus flowers from the mud. It is the same with understanding and love. These are two kinds of flowers that grow on the ground of suffering
The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.