Blooming Flowers Quotes

“Floral interaction was particularly recommended as providing solace for widows, invalids, and homesick presidents. Paying attention to a plant, Rousseau said 'relaxes, amuses, and distracts the mind, and lifts the feeling of pain.”
― Kasia Boddy, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People

“The writer Charlotte Smith, who suffered from chronic rheumatism and depression, passionately believed that plants could 'soothe' a 'wounded mind.”
― Kasia Boddy, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People

“Floral stoics still make a virtue of embracing each season in turn. Like Berowne in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, they insist that at Christmas they 'no more desire a rose / Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth; / But like of each thing that in season grows.”
― Kasia Boddy, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People

“Of course the rose has plenty of other associations beyond the realm of love and sex. It has served as a royal emblem and national flower. It represents Christian charity, the brevity of life, and hopes for happiness, a time when everything will come up roses. Secular and spiritual roses are often intertwined....”
― Kasia Boddy, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People

“Gradually, the Victorian passion for flowers, and belief in their capacity to educate began to change attitudes.
The poet and priest Frederick William Faber summed up the argument: 'Lessons oft by them are brought / Deeper than mortal sage hath taught.' Moreover, insisted William Alexander Barrett in a widely circulated book on 'floral decorations of churches,' the impulse to surround oneself with flowers was 'almost instinctive in human nature.' Blossoms did not only make homes and churches prettier; by 'pouring out in mute adoration their praises to the King of Kings', they also made them more holy.”
― Kasia Boddy, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People