Florilegium

The Flower must not blame the Bee —
That seeketh his felicity
Too often at her door —
  ~ Emily Dickinson

IF I could put my woods in song
And tell what ’s there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.
   ~ Emerson

The Dandelion’s pallid Tube
Astonishes the Grass.
   ~ Emily Dickinson

The good botanist will find flowers between the street pavements.
   ~ Emerson

Earth laughs in flowers.
   ~ Emerson

How many Flowers fail in Wood —
Or perish from the Hill —
Without the privilege to know
That they are Beautiful
   ~ Emily Dickinson

The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee.
~ Emily Dickinson

IF the foolish call them “flowers”
Need the wiser tell?
If the savants “classify” them,
It is just as well!
Those who read the Revelations
Must not criticise
Those who read the same edition
With beclouded eyes!
   ~ Emily Dickinson

Are not flowers the stars of the earth?
~ William Pitt Scargill

THE daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
   ~ Emily Dickinson

The bee flies among the flowers, and gets mint and marjoram, and generates a new product, which is not mint and marjoram, but honey; the chemist mixes hydrogen and oxygen to yield a new product, which is not these, but water; and the poet listens to conversation and beholds all objects in Nature, to give back, not them, but a new and transcendent whole. Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing.
   ~ Emerson

What tenements of Clover
Are fitting for the Bee
What edifices azure
For Butterflies and me.
   ~ Emily Dickinson

Nature seems to have been invented to inspire feelings.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

"Consider the lilies, how they grow! (Matt. vi. 28) Consider first their essential beauty, the delicate texture of their silken petals, their varied forms of grace, the tender promise of the folded bud, the faultless rhythm of the full-blown flower, the splendor of their tints, and the grateful incense of their balmy breath. Beautiful they are ; but why are they, and what is their use? The answer is, Beauty."
   ~ Frederic Henry Hedge

The senses simply stare at nature. The intellect, by means of the senses, discerns regularity and law; artistic taste enjoys the bloom and beauty which possibly slip unnoticed from the eye of science; but it is the faculty of spiritual insight which penetrates to the inmost meaning, the message involved in the facts and processes of the material creation.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

The world was not whittled into shape, or built as an external thing by any methods of carpentry. God could not create anything other than vitally, so that it should be magnetized with His attributes, and exhale them to our faculties in proportion as they are fine enough to catch the effluence. Nature is hieroglyphic. Each prominent fact in it is like a type : its final use is to set up one letter of the infinite alphabet, and help us, by its connections, to read some statement or statute applicable to the conscious world.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

Not a natural flower can grow on earth,
Without a flower upon the spiritual side,
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow
With blossoming causes.
   ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
   ~ Henry David Thoreau

IF we could look upon a square mile of flowers representing all the species with which the Creative Spirit embroiders a zone ... if we could fairly perceive, through our outward senses, one or two features of the constant order and glory of nature, our materialistic dulness would be broken, surprise and joy would be awakened, we should feel that we live amid the play of Infinite thought; and the devout spirit would be stimulated so potently that our hearts would naturally mount in praise and prayer.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

Ah, brethren, while there is a mountain in the land that is clothed with green and embroidered with flowers, say not that the love of God is a mystic sentiment which cannot be reached by the calm and healthy understanding.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

Every flower, every tree, every plant, every star, exists because it is a receptacle of the Divine vitality. It was organized and is sustained by his thought and his goodness, and we comprehend it, we really see it, when it is translucent with the rays of the Infinite life, and brings us into fellowship of mind or heart with God. The visible material world is the shell of which the spiritual world is the soul. It is the series of printed signs of which the spiritual world constitutes the sense.
   ~ Thomas Starr King

We love to fancy that a flower is the point of transition at which a material thing touches the immaterial; it is the sentient vegetable soul. We ascribe dispositions to it; we treat it as we would an innocent child.    ~ Henry Ward Beecher

It is through Beauty, that one proceeds to freedom.
   ~ Friedrich Schiller

Look at the earth crowned with flowers! What a joyous spectacle it presents; how it delights the eye; how it evokes emotion! We see the ruby-red roses, the dazzlingly white lilies, the purple violets, in all of which not only their beauty but also their origin is marvellous — for how does God’s wisdom produce such beauty from the dust of the earth?
   ~ Hugh of St. Victor

In extremely many and varied ways, the beauty of creatures is perfect, but there are four in which all their beauty principally consists; that is, in structure, motion, appearance, and quality. If anyone were up to investigating these, he would discover the wondrous light of God’s wisdom in them.
   ~ Saint Bonaventure

How much beauty is added to nature when it adorns different things with such varied colors?
   ~ Saint Bonaventure

Let us seek through the beauty of created things, that Beauty which is the most beautiful of all that is beautiful.
   ~ Hugh of St. Victor

I went out to enjoy the roses,
but that Beauty of Taraz
Saw me in the rose garden
and playfully said:
‘I am the Root and the roses
of the world are My branches.
You stop at the branches;
why not proceed to the Root?’
   ~ Mawlana Jami

If a rose enters your heart,
a rose you are.
If it is a restless nightingale,
a nightingale you are.
You are a part
and Reality is the Whole.
If for some time
You concentrate on the Whole,
the Whole you are.
   ~ Mawlana Jami

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome.
   ~ William Pitt Scargill