A Quote by Khalil Gibran

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

Khalil Gibran

Quote Topics

Oblivious Optimist Pessimist Rose Sees Thorns

Quote Author

Khalil Gibran
Lebanese - Poet
January 6, 1883 - April 10, 1931

The rose does not bloom without thorns. True, but would that the thorns did not outlive the rose.

Charles Francis Richter

Some people are near- or farsighted - I'm thorn-sighted. The thorns on the rose are in really sharp definition for me, the rose petals a little fuzzier.

Danny Meyer

God made the rose out of what was left of woman at the creation. The great difference is, we feel the rose's thorns when we gather it; and the other's when we have had it for some time.

Walter Savage Landor

Entrance into the Old Ways begins with the pricking of a finger with a rose thorn, which produces a drop of blood. This opens the way into the Thorned Path, a system, which uses five rose thorns to symbolize the five arts of Witchcraft that one should master. These arts are Herbalist, Fortune-Teller, Spirit Medium, Mystic, and Magician. We call mastering these aspects 'the gathered thorns' --thus the Thorned Path.

Raven Grimassi

Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.

Christina Rossetti

By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.

Felix Adler

There is no rose without thorns.

Pam Muñoz Ryan

The only rose without thorns is friendship.

Madeleine de Scudery

The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns.

Rumi

The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But the theory now goes That the apple's a rose, And the pear is, and so's The plum, I suppose. The dear only knows What will next prove a rose. You, of course, are a rose - But were always a rose.

Robert Frost

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

James Branch Cabell

There is darkness in light, there is pain in joy, and there are thorns on the rose.

Cate Tiernan

...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor--they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.