- Author: Lanie Keystone
By now we've all dutifully pruned back our roses. We're just waiting for that bit of new growth and the show of the first few leaves and then we can fertilize and fantasize about their springtime beauty. What better time, in the midst of winter, to think about lovely roses and what they represent. As it happens, much writing is filled with wonderful rose references.
So, sit back, read and “smell the roses” in a bouquet of words.
“This rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again, that we have much to hope from the flowers.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“When you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.” F.H. Burnett, The Secret Garden
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” Abraham Lincoln
“Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there's a plant with the sun's love that in the spring becomes a rose.” Leanne Rimes
“The quiet, singing of a rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.” Stephen King, The Wolves of the Calla
“Do thou smile like the rose at loss and gain;
For the rose, though its petals be torn asunder,
Still smiles on, and it is never cast down.” Rumi, The Masnavi
“A single rose can be my garden…a single friend, my world.” Leo Buscaglia
HAPPY VALENTINE DAY!