Josiah Gilbert Holland Quotes

How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy.

None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue.

But only God can make a tree.

Nature is the art of God.

If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals,or the storm bruised its stem, if it knew that such were not the case.

Even rain and wind and stormy clouds bring joy, just as knowing animals and flowers and where they live.

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God on this world about us. He has inscribed His thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand.

We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold, But seldom think upon our God, Who tinged these clouds with gold.

Dirt's a funny thing,' the Boss said. 'Come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?

If there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit.

He who only does not appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness.

There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.

Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls.

People give flowers as present because flowers contain true meaning of love. Anyone who tries to posses a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in the field, you'll keep it forever. That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why i will never lose you.

We are beginning to regain a knowledge of Creation, a knowledge forfeited by the fall of Adam. By God's mercy we can begin to recognize His Wonderful works and wonders also in flowers when we ponder his might and goodness. Therefore we laud, magnify and thank Him.

Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point.

Flowers are like visible messages from God.

We are dust and to dust return. In the end we're neither air, nor fire, nor water, just dirt, neither more nor less, just dirt, and maybe some yellow flowers.

I sometimes think that God will ask us, 'That wonderful world of mine, why didn't you enjoy it more?

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.

The flower of life blooms in love and radiates love all around it.