Compiled by Karen and Mike Garofalo

"A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire."

• Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, 1990, p. 13

"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck."

• Emma Goldman

" I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it."

• Gerald Manley Hopkins

"Where flowers bloom so does hope."

• Lady Bird Johnson, Public Roads: Where Flowers Bloom

"Each flower is a soul opening out to nature."

• Gerald De Nerval

"Perfumes are the feelings of flowers."

• Heinrich Heine

"The world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends."

• Persian Proverb

"When bright flowers bloom
Parchment crumbles, my words fade
The pen has dropped ..."

• Morpheus

"Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of."

• Michael Pollan, Second Nature, 1991s