Rose Garden Quotes

“A mother’s love is like an everlasting bed of roses, that continues to blossom. A mother’s love bears strength, comfort, healing and warmth. Her beauty is compared to a sunny day that shines upon each rose petal and inspires hope.”
― Ellen J. Barrier

“People where you live grow five thousand roses in one garden...yet they don't find what they are looking for.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Gardens come and go, but I find myself getting attached to certain perennials. My tulips are bridesmaids, with fat faces and good posture. Hollyhocks are long necked sisters. Daffodils are young girls running out of a white church, sun shining on their heads. Peonies are pink-haired ladies, so full and stooped you have to tie them up with string. And roses are nothing but (I hate to say it) bitches--pretty show-offs who'll draw blood if you don't handle them just right.
-Vangie Galliard Nepper, From her
"Garden Diary," March 1952”
― Michael Lee West, She Flew the Coop

“I stalked into the moonlit garden and lost myself in its labyrinth of hedges and flower beds.

I didn't care where I was going. After a while, I paused in the rose garden. The moonlight stained the red petals a deep purple and cast a silvery sheen on the white blooms.

'My father had this garden planted for my mother,' Tamlin said from behind me. I didn't bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. 'It was a mating present.'

I stared the flowers without seeing anything. The flowers I'd painted on the table at home were probably crumbling or gone by now. Nesta might have even scraped them off.

My nails pricked the skin of my palms. Tamlin providing for them or no, glamouring their memories or no, I'd been... erased from their lives. Forgotten. I'd let him erase me. He'd offered me paints and the space and time to practice; he'd shown me pools of starlight; he'd saved my life like some kind of feral knight in a legend, and I'd gulped it down like faerie wine.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“Oliver...'
'What?'
'I do like you.'
'But?'
'I just don't want you to think that I'm... that is, I'm really not looking for...'
'Hey.' I could hear the faint smile in his voice. 'It's a book, not an etching.”
― Susanna Kearsley

“We must use magic only in the rose garden. We must speak of it only in hushed voices and behind closed doors. We must never forget how dangerous it can be - nor how wicked.”
― Jessica Spotswood, Born Wicked

“Joe had always pretended indifference to flowers. He preferred fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, things to be picked and harvested, stored, dried, pickled, bottled, pulped, made into wine. But there were always flowers in his garden all thee same. Planted as if on an afterthought: dahlias, poppies, lavender, hollyhocks. Roses twined among the tomatoes. Sweet peas among the bean poles. Part of it was camouflage, of course. Part of it a lure for bees. But the truth was that Joe liked flowers, and was reluctant even to pull weeds.
Jay would not have seen the rose garden if he had not known where to look. The wall against which the roses had once been trained had been partly knocked down, leaving an irregular section of brick about fifteen feet long. Greenery had shot up it, almost reaching the top, creating a dense thicket in which he hardly recognized the roses themselves. With the shears he clipped a few briars free and revealed a single large red rose almost touching the ground.
"Old rose," remarked Joe, peering closer. "Best kind for cookin'. You should try makin' some rose petal jam. Champion."
Jay wielded the shears again, pulling the tendrils away from the bush. He could see more rosebuds now, tight and green away from the sun. The scent from the open flower was light and earthy.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“The painting was a lie.

A bright, pretty lie, bursting with pale pink blooms and fat beams of sunshine.

I'd begun it yesterday, an idle study of the rose garden lurking beyond the open windows of the studio. Through the tangle of thorns and satiny leaves, the brighter greens of the hills rolled away into the distance.

Incessant, unrelenting spring.

If I'd painted this glimpse into the court the way my gut had urged me, it would have been flesh-shredding thorns, flowers that choked off the sunlight for any plants smaller than them, and rolling hills stained red.

But each brushstroke on the wide canvas was calculated; each dab and swirl of blending colours meant to portray not just idyllic spring, but a sunny disposition as well. Not too happy, but gladly, finally healing from horrors I'd carefully divulged.

I supposed that in the past weeks, I had crafted my demeanour as intricately as one of those paintings. I supposed that if I had also chosen to show myself as I truly wished, I would have adorned with flesh shredding talons, and hands that choked the life out of those now in my company. I would have left the gilded halls stained red.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“If there is only one daisy among a thousand roses, all the interest flows there!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“It is not long before we come to the royal rose garden. The guards stop at the gate, letting us go on alone. As we make our way down a path of shimmering quartz steps, everything is hushed. The wind carries floral scents through the air, a wild perfume that doesn't exist outside of Faerie and reminds me all at once of home and menace.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“I suppose the study was more of a library, as I couldn't see any of the walls thanks to the small labyrinths of stacks flanking the main area and a mezzanine dangling above, covered wall to wall in books. But study sounded less intimidating. I meandered through some of the stacks, following a trickle of sunlight to a bank of windows on the far side. I found myself overlooking a rose garden, filled with dozens of hues of crimson and pink and white and yellow.

I might have allowed myself a moment to take in the colours, gleaming with drew under the morning sun, had I not glimpsed the painting that stretched along the wall beside the window.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I suppose the study was more of a library, as I couldn't see any of the walls thanks to the small labyrinths of stacks flanking the main area and a mezzanine dangling above, covered wall to wall in books. But study sounded less intimidating. I meandered through some of the stacks, following a trickle of sunlight to a bank of windows on the far side. I found myself overlooking a rose garden, filled with dozens of hues of crimson and pink and white and yellow.

I might have allowed myself a moment to take in the colours, gleaming with dew under the morning sun, had I not glimpsed the painting that stretched along the wall beside the window.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“The mountains I saw through the break in the fog were familiar, and yet something was off about them. They seemed too dark, somehow, and the nearest was riddled with hollows where tiny lights glimmered. The fog shifted again, and I was gazing at a luxuriant rose garden. The flowers were fat and healthy, but the garden itself was overgrown and had the air of abandonment, the rosebushes almost swallowing their trellises, some of which had collapsed. A little wind blew back the heads of the nearest roses, and I felt as if they were turning to gaze at me.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“Roses?"
"It's corny, I know," Hart said. "But I thought maybe you'd like to see the Rose Garden."
There was a neat symmetry to this garden, with beds of roses squared off in every corner of the lawn, grouped according to color. Pastel pinks and yellows to one side and the more vibrant, deeper reds and fuchsias to another. Between each segment, taller roses draped over rounded pergolas, creating leafy tunnels. Everywhere she looked, shrubs spilled over messily, brazenly, with more roses than she'd ever seen before. Rose caressed the blooms, which seemed to reach for her touch as much as she reached for theirs. Some of the roses were delicate, with a single row of petals that came in a gradient of color, going from dusty pink at the center to neon magenta at the frilly tips. Others were so jammed with petals, the number of them seemed infinite.”
― Goldy Moldavsky, Of Earthly Delights

“But there, climbing up the whitewashed brick walls of the garage, is the rose of my dreams, a rose so utterly charming, so delicate and fleeting that I can forgive him his screeching reds and wishy-washy purples. It is rarely without a flower, its petals open wide, in shades of cream, faded fawn and soft pink, and here and there a crimson petal or two. Each summer it is as if a hundred butterflies have come to rest on the wall, baking in the late-afternoon sun. (This rose, chinensis Mutabilis, is to this day my favorite.)”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts

“The roses were originally picked as much for their perfume as much for their color and form. (Unlike my first roses, which were bought purely because I was enchanted by their romantic names.) Of the basic musk, myrrh, tea, fruit and old-rose fragrances I am drawn to the latter two. Fruity is a broad bush on a night like tonight. Lady Emma Hamilton, reliable though now retired by the growers, is at her most giving: apricots and white peaches spring to mind. Gertrude Jekyll is one of the most intense of the old-rose scented varieties. She calls me over every time I set foot on the terrace.
Unlike the more generous jasmine, even the most scented rose requires us to bend a little, pushing the tip of our nose into the cluster of petals. Not so Gertrude tonight, mingling as she does with the white jasmine, hovering cloud-like over the hot stones of the terrace. I have a plan to bring the Queen of Denmark into the garden too, another old-rose scent, and I long for a decent musk rose such as Buff Beauty, exuding its faint note of cloves on a warm evening.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts