Roses are beautiful, scented flowers that have enchanted songwriters, poets, writers, and artists alike. As we’ll see in this comprehensive list of quotes about roses, the fact that something so pretty also has thorns naturally lends itself to metaphors of love, romance, and life.
1. “Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there’s a seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.” – Bette Midler
2. “A single rose can be my garden; a single friend, my world.” – Leo Buscaglia
3. “A rose does not answer its enemies with words, but with beauty.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
4. “La Vie En Rose. It is the French way of saying, ‘I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.’” – Audrey Hepburn
5. “It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.” — George Eliot
6. “I love rose gold – it’s just beautiful and classy and timeless.” – Madelaine Petsch
7. “A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won’t come true.” – Ray Evans
8. “The rose that is democracy has its own thorns. We have to bear with it.” – Don Santo
9. “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.” – E.E. Cummings
10. “If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.” – Isaac Hayes
11. “I am not the rose, but I have lived near the rose.” – Geoffery Chaucer
12. “Love is accepting the shit as well as the roses. I think I failed to ever smell the bullshit. I only smelled the roses and never realized that it is the shit that makes the roses bloom.” – Monika Basile
13. “A rose dreams of enjoying the company of bees, but none appears. The sun asks: Aren’t you tired of waiting? Yes, answers the rose, but if I close my petals, I will wither and die.” — Paulo Coelho
14. “Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.” – Mark Overby
15. “She is a rose, Jest. Lovely on the eyes, yes, but such thorns are not to be ignored.” – Marissa Meyer
16. “Days of wine and roses laugh and run away, like a child at play.” – Johnny Mercer
17. “True love is like little roses, sweet, fragrant in small doses. – Ana Claudia Antunes
18. “As delicate as flowers, as tender as rose petals, choosing to be tender and kind in a harsh environment is not weakness, it’s courage.” – Luffina Lourduraj
19. “Roses, roses, roses, I thank all the roses that bloom in the Spring.”– Andy Williams
20. “The Peace Rose—when the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix
21. “Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.” — Richard Brinsley Sheridan
22. “Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there’s a seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.” – Leanne Rimes
23. “Rose never propagandizes its fragrant, but its own fragrance spreads surrounding.” — Sukarno
24. “The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.” – Ovid
25. “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.” – Salvador Dalí
26. “When love came first to earth, the Spring Spread rose-beds to receive him.” – Thomas Campbell
27. “My life is part humor, part roses, part thorns.” – Bret Michaels
28. “Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.” – Crystal Woods
29. “Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.” – Edmund Spenser
30. “A rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorn.” – Rumi
31. “Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.” – Tupac Shakur
32. “Some people are like thorns. But you have to let them be thorns, because thorns can’t turn into petals. The trick is not letting them prick you; never let a thorn prick you!” – C. JoyBell C.
33. “World without poetry is like a lover without a rose.” – Shiny
34. “Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy.” – Rita Moreno
35. “The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.” – Saadi
36. “Most women suffer thorns for the sake of the flowers, but we who wield power adorn ourselves with flowers to hide the sting of our thorns.” – Leigh Bardugo
37. “There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
38. “Love is the only thing in this whole universe that can make the roses grow out of the swords.” – Akshay Vasu
39. “Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” – Alphonse Karr
40. “And he repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.” -Francis Quarles
41. “A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—one perfect rose.” – Dorothy Parker
42. “We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” – Dale Carnegie
43. “Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.” – Crystal Woods
44. “The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a rose, for me it is my heart.” – Frederick Peterson
45. “We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed, and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting.” – Charles Bukowski
46. “The red rose whispers of passion, and the white rose breathes of love; o, the red rose is a falcon, and the white rose is a dove.” – John Boyle O’Reilly
47. “At middle age, the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage.” – John Andrew Holmes
48. “Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” – Alphonse Karr
49. “It’s never easy to lose. But life is not all sunshine and roses.” – AB de Villiers
50. “The moon is ripe with summer’s love; her heart wild as a rose.” -Angie Weiland-Crosby
51. “Decide who you are and what your goals entail – then go for the roses. Life has little regard for those who waste time.” -Joe Huntsman, Sr.
52. “Her lips like a dew on a red rose, her eyes like a rainbow. In every drop of rain, a walking goddess glistened like a diamond.” – Kshana Surya
53. “Roses are teaching that the beauty of life will bloom, once you have taught yourself the lessons given by living with the thorns.” – Grigoris Deoudis
54. “One rose is enough for the dawn.” – Edmond Jabes
55. “I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses.” – James Joyce
56. “I can’t feel bad about being who I am, just like the girl next to me can’t feel bad about being who she is. Because a rose can never be a sunflower, and a sunflower can never be a rose.” – Miranda Kerr
57. “I never promised you a rose garden.” – Traian Basescu
58. “Love is like a rose: we fixate on the blossom, but it’s the thorny stem that keeps it alive and aloft. I think marriage is like that.” – Richard Paul Evans
59. “A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won’t come true.” – Ray Evans
60. “The rose does not bloom without thorns. True, but would that the thorns did not outlive the rose.” – Richter
61. “Holding grudges is like growing a garden of thorns in your heart.” – Thandazo Perfect Khumalo
62. “Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.” – Charles De Gaulle
63. “If you really screw up, send roses.” – Letitia Baldrige
64. “You hope you’ve found that special rose, ‘cause you love and care for the one you chose.” – Rob Cella
65. “A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.” – Oscar Wilde
66. “Every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn.” – Poison, ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”
67. “I have crushed the cup of youth like a rose between my fingers but its nectar never warmed my weary heart.” – Jon English
68. “I think life is full of challenges and problems. I don’t believe that anyone is perfect. We all make mistakes. It’s not a bed of roses, and you have to work real hard at it.” – Nigel Mansell
69. “One may live without bread, not without roses.” – John Richepin
70. “This rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
71. “In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love.” – Bahaullah.
72. “She who loves roses must be patient and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns.” – Olga Broumas
73. “There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.” – Henri Matisse
74. “Something with inner beauty will live forever, like the scent of a rose.” – Alex Flinn
75. “Discipline trains you to put up with disappointments, every rose has a thorn.” – Sai Baba
76. “The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose” – Kahlil Gibran
77. “Truths and roses have thorns about them.” — Henry David Thoreau
78. “We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” – Dale Carnegie
79. “As delicate as flower, as tender as rose petals, choosing to be tender and kind in a harsh environment is not weakness, it’s courage.” – Luffina Lourduraj
80. “You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still.” – Thomas Moore
81. “A rose to the living is more than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.” – Nixon Waterman
82. “If the rose is a beautiful flower, it is also because it opens itself.” – Charles De Leusse
83. “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.” – Hada Bejar
84. “Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
85. “The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove.” — John Boyle O’Reilly
86. “Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.” — Arthur Miller
87. “Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.” – Katharine Lee Bates
88. “But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
89. “I can’t have white roses. They symbolize death.” – Nina Arianda
90. “There’s no gift more classic and more beautiful than roses.” — La La Anthony
91. “But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.” – Anne Bronte
92. “Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy.” — Rita Moreno
93. “A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” – Leo Buscaglia
94. “Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.” – Richard Brinsley Sheridan
95. “I don’t know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice.” – Roland A. Browne
96. “Love and a red rose can’t be hid.” – Thomas Holcroft
97. “An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” — H. L. Mencken
98. “One rose says more than the dozen.” – Wendy Craig
99. “Why are roses kept for their blossoms rather than shunned for their thorns?” – J. Aleksandr Wootton
100. “A rose is an argument. It proclaims the triumph of beauty over brutality, of gentleness over violence, of the ephemeral over the lasting, and of the universal over the particular.” – Alain Meilland
101. “I looked at you and only saw beautiful because legendary is the ability of a woman’s mind to weave fields of roses from thorns.” – J. Autherine
102. “Roses never propagandize, but their own fragrance spreads surrounding.” – Sukarno
103. “I’d rather let you cover all my roads with thorns than with dead roses.” – Nema Al-Araby
104. “The gentle rose offers a powerful joy known only to the heart.” – Andrew Pacholyk
105. “Just like the rose holds her beauty among the thorns, we can gather our strength from the most unlikely places.” – Christine Evangelou
106. “I like roses as red as blood. I smell lilies as white as milk. I grow irises as purple as my dreams. So, let me give you peonies as pink my kiss.” — Alena Shubina Lis
107. “A rose isn’t quite as beautiful as it once was, when after its thorn pricks you.” – Anthony Liccione
108. “’Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.” – Edward Moore
109. “The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.” – George William Curtis
110. “I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” – Emma Goldman
111. “I personally think that a bouquet of white roses is simple, chic, and surprisingly long-lasting.” – Jeremiah Brent
112. “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” – Abraham Lincoln
113. “Her heart was tender as a rose, his love protected her heart, as a thorn that protects the rose.” – Luffina Lourduraj
114. “The one who was afraid of the pricking roses, plunged himself into an abyss without petals.” – Nur Bedeir
115. “What a lovely thing a rose is!” – Arthur Conan Doyle
116. “The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.” – William Cullen Bryant
117. “Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.” – Edmund Spenser
118. “But ne’er the rose without the thorn.” – Robert Herrick
119. “They are not long, the days of wine and roses.” -Ernest Dowson
120. “The gentle rose offers a powerful joy known only to the heart.” – Andrew Pacholyk
121. “We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.” – Bernard Williams
122. “God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.” – J. M. Barrie
123. “Love is a rose, but you’d better not pick it, it only grows when it’s on the vine. Handful of thorns and you know you’ve missed it. Lose your love when you say the word ‘mine.’” – Neil Young
124. “Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me. That now she knows, when I resemble her to thee, how sweet and fair she seems to be.” – Edmund Waller
125. “I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” — Emma Goldman
126. Don’t divorce your wife: bring her a dozen roses; the shock will kill her, and you can use the roses for the funeral.” – Evan Esar
127. “Like freshly cut roses, I place life in a vase of love.” – Kamand Kojouri
128. “If you know how to make people happy with a single look, then you are a rose! If you know how to hurt people with a single touch, then you’re a thorn!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
129. “Which is loveliest in a rose? Its coy beauty when it’s budding, or its splendor when it blows?” – George Barlow
130. “As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” — Ben Hogan
131. “What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine.” – Thomas Moore
132. “Every breath of her flowers a rose in my garden.” – Kshana Surya
133. “A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring.” – William Carlos Williams
134. “Poetry without truth, is like a rose without thorns. Still pretty, but sometimes, the real beauty comes from the things that can make us bleed.” – Cody Edward Lee Miller
135. “Where, you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
136. “When you transplant a rose, transplant the reddest one.” – Marty Rubin
137. “Love is a rose, but you better not pick it. It only grows when it’s on the vine. A handful of thorns and you’ll know you’ve missed it. You lose your love when you say the word ‘mine’.” – Neil Young
138. “You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.” – Ziggy
139. “September sky never looked more charming; or the sublime petals of the rose looked so graceful.” – Avijeet Das
140. “Τhen, as though it had been waiting on a nearby roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl’s face the color of white roses.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
141. “One rose is enough for the dawn.” – Edmond Jabes
142. “When love came first to earth, the Spring spread rose beds to receive him.” – Thomas Campbell
143. “I was too busy admiring the petals that I forgot about the thorns.” – Orion Carloto
144. “You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still.” – Thomas Moore
145. “It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes her so important.” – Antoine De Saint Exupéry
146. “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
147. “Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.” – Arthur Miller
148. “But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed.” – John Keats
149. “Wild roses are fairest, and nature is a better gardener than art.” – Louisa May Alcott
150. “Roses shouldn’t waste their thorns on each other.” – Heather Herrman
151. “Truths and roses have thorns about them.” – Henry David Thoreau
152. “I’d rather let you cover all my roads with thorns than with dead roses.” – Nema Al-Araby
153. “In a world full of roses, stand out like a dandelion in the middle of a green, plush lawn.” — June Stoyer
154. “As you walk down the fairway of life, you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” – Ben Hogan
155. “The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.” – Saadi
156. “But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, for winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed.” – John Keats
157. “I love rose gold—it’s just beautiful, and classy, and timeless.” – Madelaine Petsch
158. “But he that dares not grasp the thorn. Should never crave the rose.” – Anne Bronte
159. “My life is part humor, part roses, part thorns.” – Bret Michaels
160. “The rose that is democracy has its own thorns. We have to bear with it.” – Don Santo
161. “The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.” – Ovid
162. “Teaching you how to grow a garden is better than giving you a thousand roses.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
163. “I named all my children after flowers. There’s Lillie and Rose and my son, Artificial.” – Bert Williams
164. “All June I bound the rose in sheaves. Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves.” – Robert Browning
165. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — William Shakespeare
166. “There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
167. “One rose says more than the dozen.” – Wendy Craig
168. “Τhese roses, only half awake, in the defenselessness of utter beauty.” – Willa Cather
169. “It’s a rare man that understands the value of a perfect rose.” – Mary Alice Young
170. “A work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.” – Clive Bell
171. “If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.” – Isaac Hayes
172. “Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.” – Katharine Lee Bates
173. “I never promised you a rose garden.” — Traian Basescu
174. “True love is like little roses, sweet and fragrant in small doses.” – Ana Claudia Antunes
175. “It’s ok to feel delicate sometimes. Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.” – Crystal Woods
176. “But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
177. “The mind is a red rose with thorns. Don’t get too close.” – Bert McCoy
178. “Life is not always going to be roses and rainbows. You are going to have uncomfortable moments. It’s what we do with those moments that is going to count and determine our destiny.” – Lana
179. “A relationship is like a rose. How long it lasts, no one knows.” – Rob Cella
180. “The rose is fairest when its budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.” – Sir Walter Scott
181. “A rose to the living is more than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.” – Nixon Waterman
182. “It will never rain roses. When we want to have more roses, we must plant more trees.” – George Eliot
183. “A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.” — Oscar Wilde
184. “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.” — Salvador Dali
185. “If the rose is a beautiful flower, it is also because it opens itself.” – Charles De Leusse
186. “Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.” -Alphonse Karr
187. “Love and a red rose can’t be hidden.” – Thomas Holcroft
188. “The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose.” – William Wordsworth
189. “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.” -Rose Schneiderman
190. “I have brought you the rose of love, and you have crowned me, in these dark hours, with their thorns.” – Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
191. “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose—you can smell it and that is all.” – W. Somerset Maugham
192. “The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.” – Kahlil Gibran
193. “While mantling on the maiden’s cheek, Young roses kindled into thought.” -Thomas Moore
194. “I like roses as red as blood. I smell lilies as white as milk. I grow irises as purple as my dreams. So, let me give you peonies as pink as my kiss.” – Alena Shubina Lis