Violet > Violet's Quotes

“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
― Ellen Bass

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
― Mark Twain

“She is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The same elements that are inside the rest of us, but I can’t help thinking she’s more than that and she’s got other elements going on that no one’s ever heard of, ones that make her stand apart from everybody else. I feel this brief panic as I think, What would happen if one of those elements malfunctioned or just stopped working altogether? I make myself push this aside and concentrate on the feel of her skin until I no longer see molecules but Violet.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
like the eye of a violet.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.”
― A.A. Milne

“Tumbling-hair
picker of buttercups
violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
also picking flowers”
― E. E Cummings, Poems, 1905-1962