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In my bedroom hangs a Marc
Chagall print where an angel is hovering over a bouquet of fresh flowers,
her hand over her heart as if moved by the beauty and the scent. "Art,"
Chagall wrote, "is the increasing effort to compete with the beauty of
flowers--and never succeeding," though in this painting, he clearly
succeeded in seducing the heart of an angel.
Juxtapose this image with another: one of the sweetest memories I have of
my now-deceased grandfather is of him going outside every day to cut fresh
roses and bring them in to my grandmother. I imagine he knew what botanist
Luther Burbank knew, that "flowers always make people better, happier and
more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul," and what
Mohammed knew and said in The Koran, that "bread feeds the body, indeed,
but flowers feed also the soul": I imagine his trips out to the garden and
back with those roses as one of his ways of feeding and nurturing the soul
of my grandmother, seducing the heart of his angel.
Every morning I go outside now and cut fresh flowers or roses from my own
garden. It is a tradition that I happily carry on, sometimes to feed and
nurture my own soul, sometimes to seduce the heart of my beloved,
sometimes to connect with the soul of my grandfather, and always, to
invite the presence of the angels inside.
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I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what
Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by
moment, of naked existence.
--Aldous Huxley
Paradise -
I see flowers
from the cottage where I lie.
--Yaitsu
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal
seductiveness of life.
--Jean Giraudoux
Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously
preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most
ancient traditions which has survived their decadence. And since flowers
had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful
analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which
perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and
violent intoxication with which they inspire us. So it is that certain
peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to
their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an
entire novel: The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts, or: The Water That
Sleeps Beneath the Moon, or: The Sunlight in the Forest, or: The First
Desire of the Reclining Virgin, or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because
in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain; or, even better,
this one: I Possessed My Lover in the Garden.
--Octave Mirbeau
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of
books.
--Walt Whitman
As I hold the flower in my hand and think of trying to describe it,
I realize how poor a creature I am,
how impotent are words in the presence of such perfection.
--Celia Thaxter
Each flower is a soul blossoming in nature.
--Gérard de Nerval
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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 the
character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.
--Lydia M. Child
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes
Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a
crowded day - like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Correct handling of flowers refines the personality.
--Bokuyo Takeda
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life
would change.
--Buddha
Our highest assurance of the goodness of providence rests in the flowers.
All other things-our powers, our desires, our food-are necessary for our
existence, but the 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 we have much to hope from the flowers.
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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