(Yes, I’ve been enjoying PG Wodehouse. How could you tell?)

Teaser Tuesday

“The one thing that saved me was that I always thought facts mattered. And once you think that facts matter, then of course that’s a very different ball game.” MAVERICK: A BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS SOWELL, Jason Riley

Today’s TTT is “May Flowers”, and it’s supposed to be a psuedo-freebie in which we take liberties with flowers. I did that in ’24 with books with flower on the title, pictures of flowers, and a bit of music with flowers in the title. I feel this is peak May Flowers Freebie posting, so check it out. This time I’m going to share ….quotes about flowers, but I really liked sharing “Flower Duet” so I’m going to share another flowery song. Fun fact: when looking for quotes for this (because I only knew a few from memory and had to look on goodreads for the rest), I found a quote that said flowers were the Romeo and Juliet of nature. Someone has no idea how that play goes, do they?

(1) “Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour 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.” MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

(2) “I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was the end of some sort of career. I don’t know why, exactly. I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me. At the end of Slaughterhouse-Five…I had a shutting-off feeling…that I had done what I was supposed to do and everything was OK.” (Kurt Vonnegut, CONVERSATIONS WITH KURT VONNEGUT)

(3)
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. (“Nothing Gold can Stay”, Robert Frost. All my Outsiders people holla!)

(4) Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees (“Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan”, John Greenleaf Whittier. The entire poem is worth reading/reciting/memorizing.)

(5) “Butterflies are not insects,’ Captain John Sterling said soberly. ‘They are self-propelled flowers.” Bob Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

(6) “I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.” Herbert Rappaport

(7) “Writing blooms flowers for mind, which last forever.” Debasish Mridha

(8) “Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed?” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

(9) “She paused for a moment, curtsying to the flowers as if they were lords and ladies of the court.”
― Gina Marinello-Sweeney, Prince of Chandeliers

(10) “I ain’t dead yet — gimme my flowers now!” – Charlie Parr