A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit,--and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Any Away Behind Decay Does Enough Few Flowers Friend Fruit How Itself Leave Life Little Many My Friend Pass Perish Rarely Really Ripen Rot Should Strange Suffer Trace Visionary Yield

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Each pineapple plant produces only one fruit per year. It can take up to two years for the pineapple to ripen, and it's important to wait, because once it's picked, it can't ripen any further. The unripe pineapple is not only horrible tasting but poisonous.

Kate Christensen

Revenge is a luscious fruit which you must leave to ripen.

Emile Gaboriau

I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand.

Tayeb Salih

The fruit does not come from the outside, the fruit is created within you. Whatever you do, you develop receptivity for it inside yourself. Someone who wants love should give his love. Someone who wants bliss should start sharing his bliss. Someone who wants flowers to shower in his home should shower flowers in other people's homes. There is no other way. So compassion is an emotion that each person has to develop in order to enter into meditation.

Rajneesh

Whoever reaches into a rosebush may seize a handful of flowers; but no matter how many one holds, it's only a small portion of the whole. Nevertheless, a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers. Only if we refuse to reach into the bush, because we can't possibly seize all the flowers at once, or if we spread out our handful of roses as if it were the whole of the bush itself -- only then does it bloom apart from us, unknown to us, and we are left alone.

Lou Andreas-Salomé

I guess even the prettiest things eventually end up stinking. Everything does. We all will die and rot and decay and be reborn as dirt or flowers or worms, or polar bears who will drown because their ice is all melting, or presidents of war-torn countries, or whales swimming around acidifying seas. And then we will rot and decay again. And so it goes.

Jaimal Yogis

Man designs for himself a garden with a hundred kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of flowers, a hundred kinds of fruit and vegetables. Suppose, then, that the gardener of this garden knew no other distinction between edible and inedible, nine-tenths of this garden would be useless to him. He would pull up the most enchanting flowers and hew down the noblest trees and even regard them with a loathing and envious eye. This is what the Steppenwolf does with the thousand flowers of his soul. What does not stand classified as either man or wolf he does not see at all.

Hermann Hesse

There is nothing can equal the tender hours When life is first in bloom, When the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers, Finds everywhere perfume; When the present is all and it questions not If those flowers shall pass away, But pleased with its own delightful lot, Dreams never of decay.

Henry George Bohn

All beautiful and noble qualities have been united in me... I shall be the fruit which will leave eternal vitality behind even after its decay. How great must be your joy, therefore, to have given birth to me.

Egon Schiele

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.

William Blake

In any activity, we have to know what to expect, how to reach our objectives and what capacity we possess for the proposed task. The only people who can say they have renounced the fruit are those who, thus equipped, feel no desire for the results of the conquest, and remain absorbed in combat. You can renounce the fruit, but this renunciation does not mean indifference toward the result.

Paulo Coelho

A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.

Andre Maurois

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.