The Most Inspirational Flower Quotes About Life, Love, and Friendship

close up of flowers for a ceremony
The 56 Best Quotes About FlowersKevin Vandenberghe - Getty Images


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The best flowers can communicate all our complicated feelings, from sorrow and longing to love and gratitude. But if your love language leans more toward words of affirmation than gift giving, there are still ways to incorporate flower meanings and imagery into your confessions of romance (or rejection) with quotes about flowers. The best flower quotes take the beauty of these blooms and put them into words. Whether you need inspiration to get through a tough time or a reminder of nature's perseverance, we've got you covered. Read on for the 56 best flower quotes to adorn your walls, greeting cards, and even Instagram captions.

Inspirational Flower Quotes

  • "People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." ―Iris Murdoch

  • "Flowers…are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities in the world." ―Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind." ―Luther Burbank

  • "Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star." ―Paul A. M. Dirac

  • "Without darkness, nothing comes to birth,/ As without light, nothing flowers." ―May Sarton

  • "There are always flowers for those who want to see them." —Henri Matisse

  • "We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different for ourselves." —Gwendolyn Brooks

  • "You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way." —Walter Hagen

  • "How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers." ―Mother Teresa of Calcutta

  • "Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning." —Lydia M. Child

  • "Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower." —William C. Bryant

  • "Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts." ―Sigmund Freud

  • "After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world." —Christian Dior

  • "A rose can never be a sunflower, and a sunflower can never be a rose. All flowers are beautiful in their own way, and that's like women too. ―Miranda Kerr

  • "Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots." ―Shannon Mullen

Quotes About Flowers Blooming

  • "If you tend to a flower, it will bloom, no matter how many weeds surround it." —Matshona Dhliwayo

  • "When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower." ―Alexander Den Heijer

  • "Where flowers bloom so does hope." —Lady Bird Johnson

  • "Every flower blooms in its own time." ―Ken Petti

  • "Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower." John Harrigan

  • "Let us live like flowers, wild and beautiful and drenched in sun." ―Ellen Everett

Quotes About Flowers and Love

  • "Love is the flower you've got to let grow." —John Lennon

  • "The rose is the flower and handmaiden of love—the lily, her fair associate, is the emblem of beauty and purity." —Dorothea Dix

  • "Love is like wildflowers; it's often found in the most unlikely places." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Life is the flower for which love is the honey." —Victor Hugo

  • "A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and a man cannot live without love." —Max Müller

  • "Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same." —Helen Keller

  • "It's spring again. I can hear the birds sing again. See the flowers start to bud. See young people fall in love." —Lou Rawls

  • "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." —William Shakespeare

  • "By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower." —Rabindranath Tagore

  • "Flowers are love's truest language." —Park Benjamin Sr.

Short Quotes About Flowers

  • "I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular." ―Mary Oliver

  • "The earth laughs in flowers." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed." —Walt Whitman

  • "Flowers are the music of the ground from earth's lips spoken without sound." ―Edwin Curran

  • "Perfumes are the feelings of flowers." ―Heinrich Heine

  • "Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature." ―Gerard de Nerval

  • "Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks." ―G. K. Chesterton

  • "I must have flowers, always, and always." ―Claude Monet

  • "Flowers don't tell, they show." —Stephanie Skeem

  • "A flower blossoms for its own joy." ―Oscar Wilde

  • "Lilies bloom when we laugh together." —Suyasha Subedi

  • "Butterflies are self-propelled flowers." ―Robert A. Heinlein

  • "Every flower must grow through dirt." ―Laurie Jean Sennott

  • "A weed is but an unloved flower." —Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  • "In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends." ―Kakuzō Okakura

  • "Happiness is to hold flowers in both hands." —Japanese proverb

  • "Flowers are words which even a babe may understand." —Arthur Cleveland Coxe

  • "Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them." —Chinese proverb

  • "One marked feature of the people, both high and low, is a love for flowers." —Robert Fortune

Jokes About Flowers

  • "If you want to say it with flowers, remember that a single rose screams in your face: 'I'm cheap!'" —Delta Burke

  • "Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive." —Brian Clough

  • "I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error." —Sara Bonnett Stein

  • "I named all my children after flowers. There's Lillie and Rose and my son, Artificial." —Bert Williams

  • "If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging." —Alan Bennett

  • "If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers." —Doug Larson

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