Friday, August 31, 2007

Daisy Chain


Did you know that daisies have long been associated with innocence and unaffected simplicity? After doing mounds of research pertaining to floral symbolism for my thesis, I suppose I'll be spending the rest of my life picking at hidden meanings in paintings. Of course, Victorians would have read such paintings as open books (Victorian ladies dedicated much time to florigraphy, the study of floral symbolism). But now we must content ourselves to imagining what it would be like to speak a language of flowers.

Here are some flower quotes that "grew" on me ;)

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. ~John Ruskin

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"

Not worlds on worlds, in phalanx deep, Need we to prove a God is here; The daisy, fresh from nature's sleep, Tells of His hand in lines as clear. ~John Mason Good

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