Orchid Blooming Quotes

If he’d been any other man and i'd been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica

One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid... One wants... But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?

The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.

His Majesty, may he live forever and prosper greatly... His Majesty, may sun finches warble sweet melodies in his ear... His Majesty, may orchids bloom in the wake of his passing... His Majesty, may minstrels compose epics at the sound of his glorious name... His Majesty, may his magnificent sword shatter the breasts of his enemies...

Scatter as a prayer escaping my lips... as orchids blooming in clouds.

In that hothouse atmosphere, criminal records bloomed like orchids all around us.

No matter how decadent and corrupt my body becomes, I will, like a desert orchid that blooms once every hundred years, come to you bearing this frigidness toward life.

[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty] One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

I don’t usually wear perfume,” Annabelle said. “Mr. Hunt likes the smell of clean skin.” “He may prefer Lady of the Night.” Annabelle looked appalled. “Is that what this is called?” “It’s named after a night-blooming orchid,” Lillian explained. “Oh, good,” Annabelle said sardonically. “I was afraid that it was named after a harlot.

I thought of Theo, the sleepy warmth of him in the dark, waking slowly like a night-blooming orchid, his sprawling limbs as tender and sinuous as purple-bruised petals.

In an interview recorded by Mark Edmundson in Trotsky Without Orchids, Bloom described faculty politics as "Stalinism without Stalin. . . . All of the traits of the Stalinists in the 1930s and 19408 are being repeated . . . in the universities in the 1990s.

Is your child a dandelion or an orchid? An odd question, I know, but psychologists use these terms to distinguish between children who are pretty resilient, mostly able to cope with adversity and stress (dandelions), and those who are more sensitive to their conditions (orchids).57 If things are just right, orchids will really bloom. If not, they will suffer.

Weak sunlight slanted across the table, flecked with glimmering, floating dust motes, some of them swirling around the light blue petals. Confusion spread through her as she saw the inflorescence of glowing blooms. The broad ovoid leaves were clan and glossy, and the roots anchored among the crushed clay pottery shards had been carefully trimmed and kept damped. The Blue Vanda hadn't sickened in Winterborne's care... it had thrived. Helen leaned over the orchid, touching the beautiful arc of its stem with a single fingertip. Shaking her head in wonder, she felt a tickle at the edge of her chin, and didn't realize it was a tear until she saw it drop onto one of the Vanda's leaves. "Oh, Mr. Winterborne," she whispered, and reached up to wipe at her wet cheeks. "Rhys. There's been a mistake.

I had come to love the space, and I could see why Lady Anna had too. The orchids were positively glorious. She'd tagged each flower with its proper botanical name, but I favored the pet names she'd given each bloom. For instance, a stunning pink 'Cattleya' was named "Lady Catalina." And a yellow 'Oncidium,' which to me looked like a flock of ladies in fluffy party dresses, was called "Lady Aralia of the Bayou.

Drake took in the grove of poplar and chestnut trees standing to one side of the cabin, providing a warmer shade than the mountains. At their feet spread a carpet of abundant wildflowers blooming with early color. Chicory with its blue-fringed petals stood proudly on long spindly stems, seeming to wave at them in welcome. Purple spiderwort and common mullein dotted the landscape. Nearer the cabin was a cluster of showy orchids, bloomed out in purple and white.

If he does it right and is lucky, in nine or 10 months he scoops the tiny half-inch seedlings out of the bottle and plants them in community pots. A year later he transplants them to individual three-inch pots and in another two years to 4 1/2-inch pots, and crosses his fingers. Then, five or six or seven years since the day he put pollen to stigma, he sees an orchid no one ever saw before. It is different from any orchid that has ever bloomed, including those in the Garden of Eden.

Are those chocolate chip?'' Cole reaches her first and claims one. ''Oh, my godness.'' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. ''Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'' ''River did it.'' Cole smirks at the guy. ''And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'' ''River Marks.'' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. ''How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'' River glares at Cole before bowing his head. ''I'm sorry, Nana.'' ''The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.'' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. ''Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.'' ''Yes, ma'am,'' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar. ''Good, good.'' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. ''I'll leave you kids to your practice.'' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves. ''Are you a rose?'' River sneers at Cole. ''Or a lilly?'' ''Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.'' Cole responds.

I wanted a Fakahatchee ghost orchid, in full bloom, maybe attached to a gnarled piece of custard apple tree, and I wanted its roots to spread as broad as my hand and each root to be only as wide as a toothpick. I wanted the bloom to be snow-white, white as sugar, white as lather, white as teeth. I knew its shape by heart, the peaked face with the droopy mustache of petals, the albino toad with its springy legs. It would not be the biggest or the showiest or the rarest or the finest flower here, except to me, because I wanted it.

Her eyes widened as she realized it was the potted Blue Vanda she had given him. The orchid he hadn’t wanted but had taken anyway. He had sent it back. Helen hurried to the orchid, wondering what condition it was in. Weak sunlight slanted across the table, flecked with glimmering, floating dust motes, some of them swirling around the light blue petals. Confusion spread through her as she saw the inflorescence of glowing blooms. The broad ovoid leaves were clean and glossy, and the roots anchored among the crushed clay pottery shards had been carefully trimmed and kept damp. The Blue Vanda hadn’t sickened in Winterborne’s care...it had thrived.

I read lots of local newspapers and particularly the shortest articles in them, and most particularly any articles that are full of words in combinations that are arresting. In the case of the orchid story I was interested to see the words 'swamp' and 'orchids' and 'Seminoles' and 'cloning' and 'criminal' together in one short piece. Sometimes this kind of story turns out to be something more, some glimpse of life that expands like those Japanese paper balls you drop in water and then after a moment they bloom into flowers, and the flower is so marvelous that you can't believe there was a time when all you saw in front of you was a paper ball and a glass of water.

She bore an uncanny resemblance to my mother, but the same beauty bloomed differently in each of them. My mother's fairness was exquisite and untouchable, roaming alone in an abandoned castle. Khalto Bahiya's beauty took you in immediately. Hers was easy and disclosed hordes of laughter stolen from wherever it could be found. Gravity, sun, and time had scrawled on their faces the travails of hard work, childbirth, and destitution. But even these lines disagreed on their faces. Khalto Bahiya's face incorporated them into her joy and her pain, so that lines appeared and hid according to her expressions and provided frames and curves to her tenderness. Gentle folds nestled her lips and made her face open when she smiled - like an orchid. On Mama, the lines had always seemed incongruous - as if her beauty could accept no change or outside interference. The wrinkles on Mama's face had carved her skin like prison bars, behind which one could discern the perpetual plaint of something grand and sad, still alive and wanting to get out.

We remembered the delicate fig-shaped island,stranded between the American Empire and peaceful Canada, as it had been years ago, with its welcoming red white-and-blue flag-shaped flower bed,splashing fountains, European casino, and horse paths leading through woods where Indians had bent trees into giant bows. Now grass grew inpatches down to the littered beach where children fished with pop topstied to string. Paint flaked from once-bright gazebos. Drinking fountains rose from mud puddles laid with broken brick stepping stones. Along the road the granite face of the Civil War Hero had been spray-painted black. Mrs. Huntington Perry had donated her prize orchids to the Botanical Garden in the time before the riots, when civic money still ran high, but since her death ion the eroding tax base had forced cutbacks that had laid off one skilled gardener a year, so that plants that had survived transplantation from equatorial regions to bloom again in that false paradise now withered, weeds sprang up amid scrupulous identification tags, and fake sunlight flowed for only a few hours per day. The only thing that remained was the steam vapor, beading the sloping greenhouse windows and filling our nostrils with the moisture and aroma of a rotting world

The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.

In 1853, Haussmann began the incredible transformation of Paris, reconfiguring the city into 20 manageable arrondissements, all linked with grand, gas-lit boulevards and new arteries of running water to feed large public parks and beautiful gardens influenced greatly by London’s Kew Gardens. In every quarter, the indefatigable prefect, in concert with engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, refurbished neglected estates such as Parc Monceau and the Jardin du Luxembourg, and transformed royal hunting enclaves into new parks such as enormous Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. They added romantic Parc des Buttes Chaumont and Parc Montsouris in areas that were formerly inhospitable quarries, as well as dozens of smaller neighborhood gardens that Alphand described as "green and flowering salons." Thanks to hothouses that sprang up in Paris, inspired by England’s prefabricated cast iron and glass factory buildings and huge exhibition halls such as the Crystal Palace, exotic blooms became readily available for small Parisian gardens. For example, nineteenth-century metal and glass conservatories added by Charles Rohault de Fleury to the Jardin des Plantes, Louis XIII’s 1626 royal botanical garden for medicinal plants, provided ideal conditions for orchids, tulips, and other plant species from around the globe. Other steel structures, such as Victor Baltard’s 12 metal and glass market stalls at Les Halles in the 1850s, also heralded the coming of Paris’s most enduring symbol, Gustave Eiffel’s 1889 Universal Exposition tower, and the installation of steel viaducts for trains to all parts of France. Word of this new Paris brought about emulative City Beautiful movements in most European capitals, and in the United States, Bois de Boulogne and Parc des Buttes Chaumont became models for Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park in New York. Meanwhile, for Parisians fascinated by the lakes, cascades, grottoes, lawns, flowerbeds, and trees that transformed their city from just another ancient capital into a lyrical, magical garden city, the new Paris became a textbook for cross-pollinating garden ideas at any scale. Royal gardens and exotic public pleasure grounds of the Second Empire became springboards for gardens such as Bernard Tschumi’s vast, conceptual Parc de La Villette, with its modern follies, and “wild” jardins en mouvement at the Fondation Cartier and the Musée du Quai Branly. In turn, allées of trees in some classic formal gardens were allowed to grow freely or were interleaved with wildflower meadows and wild grasses for their unsung beauty. Private gardens hidden behind hôtel particulier walls, gardens in spacious suburbs, city courtyards, and minuscule rooftop terraces, became expressions of old and very new gardens that synthesized nature, art, and outdoors living.

The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.

Forgive me for interrupting your task," Devon said to Helen after they were introduced. A hesitant smile emerged. "Not at all, my lord. I'm merely observing the orchids to make certain there is nothing they lack." "How can you tell what they lack?" Devon asked. "I see the color of their leaves, or the condition of the petals. I look for signs of aphids or thrips, and I try to remember which varieties prefer moist soil and which ones like to be drier." "Will you show them to me?" Devon asked. Helen nodded and led him along the rows, pointing out particular specimens. "This was all my mother's collection. One of her favorites was Peristeria elata." She showed him a plant with marble-white blossom. "The central part of the flower resembles a tiny dove, you see? And this one is Dendrobium aemulum. It's called a feather orchid because of the petals." With a flash of shy mischief, Helen glanced back at Kathleen and remarked, "My sister-in-law isn't fond of orchids." "I despise them," Kathleen said, wrinkling her nose. "Stingy, demanding flowers that take forever to bloom. And some of them smell like old boots or rancid meat." "Those aren't my favorite," Helen admitted. "But I hope to love them someday. Sometimes one must love something before it becomes lovable.

Nothing in science can account for the way people feel about orchids. Orchids seem to drive people crazy. Those who love them love them madly. Orchids arouse passion more than romance. They are the sexiest flowers on earth. The name "orchid" derives from the Latin orchis, which means testicle. This refers not only to the testicle-shaped tubers of the plant but to the fact that it was long believed that orchids sprang from the spilled semen of mating animals. The British Herbal Guide of 1653 advised that orchids be used with discretion. "They are hot and moist in operation, under the dominion of Venus, and provoke lust exceedingly." In Victorian England the orchid hobby grew so consuming that it was sometimes called "orchidelirium"; under its influence many seemingly normal people, once smitten with orchids, became less like normal people and more like John Laroche. Even now, there is something delirious in orchid collecting. Every orchid lover I met told me the same story - how one plant in the kitchen had led to a dozen, and then to a backyard greenhouse, and then, in some cases, to multiple greenhouses and collecting trips to Asia and Africa and an ever-expanding orchid budget and a desire for oddities so stingy in their rewards that only a serious collector could appreciate them - orchids like the Stanhopea, which blooms only once a year for at most one day. "The bug hits you," a collector from Guatemala explained to me. "You can join A.A. to quit drinking, but once you get into orchids you can't do anything to kick the habit.

It was always with her now, that sadness, like one of those rare orchids you saw clinging to jungle branches on TV, always blooming in her at unexpected moments, and even on the move, scuffing down the hall toward Doodle's room, the thought of evading it called it into being. Sadness. The word itself didn't do the feeling justice. What she felt was a more complicated alchemy of emotion, equal parts grief and loneliness and longing, with measures of resentment and self-pity drizzled in.

Quincel de Morhban received me in his garden, something I never would have suspected, from either the man or the place. It was an inner sanctum, like Delaunay’s, like I had known in the Night Court, only vaster. It was shielded from the elements, warmed by a dozen braziers and torches, with mirrors set to gather the sun’s heat when it availed, and scrims of sheerest silk that could be drawn across the open roof to protect the delicate flora. In all defiance of the early spring chill, a riot of flowers bloomed: spikenard and foxglove, azalea, Lady’s slipper and Love-Not-Lost, orchids and phlox, lavender and roses. “You are pleased,” de Morhban said softly. He stood beside a small fountain, awaiting me; his eyes drank in the sight of me. “It costs me thousands of ducats to maintain this place. I have one master gardener from L’Agnace, and one from Namarre, and they are ever at odds with each other. But I reckon it worth the cost. I am D’Angeline. So we count the cost of pleasure.” He reached out one hand for me. “So I count your cost.

A god of war is also the god of those who are caught in the wheel of eternal struggle, who fight on despite knowledge of certain defeat, who stand with their companions against spear and catapult and gleaming metal, armed with only their pride, who strive and assay and press and toil, all the while knowing that they cannot win.’ ‘You are not only the god of the strong, but also the god of the weak. Courage is better displayed when it seems all is lost, when despair appears the only rational course.’ ‘True courage is to insist on seeing when all around you is darkness.’ And Fithowéo stood up and ululated. As his voice filled the cave walls and bounced back to his ears, he seemed to see the stalactites hanging overhead like bejeweled curtains, the stalagmites growing out of the ground like bamboo shoots, the bats careening through the air like battle kites, the night-blooming orchids and cave roses blooming like living treasure—the cave was filled with light. The god of war laughed and bowed down to the orchid and kissed her. ‘Thank you for showing me how to see.’ ‘I am but the lowest of the Hundred Flowers,’ said the orchid. ‘But the tapestry of Dara is woven not only from the proud chrysanthemum or the arrogant winter plum, the bamboo who holds up great houses or the coconut who provides sweet nectar and pleasing music. Chicory, dandelion, butter-and-eggs, ten thousand species of orchids, and countless other flowers—we have no claim to the crests of the great noble families, and we are not cultivated in gardens and not gently caressed by the fingers of great ladies and eager courtiers. But we also fight our war against hail and storm, against drought and deprivation, against the sharp blade of the weeding hoe and the poisonous emanations of the herbicide-sprayer. We also have a claim on time, and we deserve a god who understands that every day in the life of the common flower is a day of battle.’ And Fithowéo continued to ululate, letting his throat and ears be his eyes, until he strode out of the cave, emerged into the sunlight, and picked up two pieces of darkest obsidian and placed them in his eye sockets so that he had eyes again. Though they were blind to light, they sowed fear into all who gazed into them.

Where have you been all this time? Were you off somewhere singing, putting cats to sleep on the porch, drifting about in the rapids of time, the glow of the morning sun and the rain of a summer afternoon beating down as you pass by, your lips shut tight like a bloodsucking plant? The me that is nowhere to be found now, the me that will turn to ash and vanish, turn to darkness and rot- -that me extends a squalid hand at the final moment of this crash, having entirely deserted and abandoned my life. In truth, I was not me. The me that was born into an animal body and lived as a slave to poverty and insult was nothing but the emptiness that had been momentarily bewitched out of me by an evil spirit. That distant me is precious and beautiful. No matter how decadent and corrupt my body becomes, I will, like a desert orchid that blooms once every hundred years, come to you bearing this frigidness toward life.

She brought over a freshly brewed cup of black orchid tea and sat across from me. The tea was especially fragrant. From that day on, it was my favorite. The scent reminded me of rainy days and libraries and a jumble of gardens where there were flowers in bloom.

Your father has a fondness for orchids." Could she know my father's affinity for orchids is in direct correlation with his affinity for my mother? "Much too finicky for me. I prefer azaleas. When I was a little girl, I used to drink the nectar from the flowers." I brighten a little. "I did that, too." Mom had azalea plants all over our property. She taught me how to pull the blossom from the stem and slurp from the tip of the flower like her mother had shown her. I always thought it was something unique to us, to our family. But maybe it was more. A connection to Japan, an invisible tether. "Is there a variety you prefer? I quite enjoy the omurasaki." I've caught her attention. "It is a lovely bloom," she says.

I gaze at the orchid sitting on his windowsill. It's wrapped in bamboo and tied with a purple tassel. Its yellow and green leaves are long and narrow, striped like a tiger's tail. The blooms are tiny, white, and fragrant. "Fūkiran," my father says. "Grown since the Edo Period and collected by feudal lords as gifts to the shogun or emperor." He slides the office doors closed. "I know." I smile because it's familiar. My mother has a woodblock of it above her nightstand. Neofinetia falcata.

Mankind,’ however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. ‘Mankind’ is a zoological expression, or an empty word. But conjure away the phantom, break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing wealth of actual forms the Living with all its immense fullness, depth and movement hitherto veiled by a catchword, a dryasdust scheme, and a set of personal ‘ideals.’ I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle, each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will, and feeling, its own death Here indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered. Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the stone-pines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves but there is no ageing ‘Mankind.’ Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. These cultures, sublimated life-essences, grow with the same superb aimlessness as the flowers of the field. They belong, like the plants and the animals, to the living Nature of Goethe, and not to the dead Nature of Newton. I see world-history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the contrary, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding on to itself one epoch after another.

Inside the valley, the fragrance of orchids still hung in the air, although they were no longer in bloom. A patch of star-scattered sky lent a bluey sheen to the dark of the grassy space.

Blooming roses, bright orchids and pretty peonies for weddings, birthdays, anniversary, or any celebration.

The gardens surrounding the palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha were spectacularly beautiful, full of vibrant colors, the smell of jasmine pervading everything. Harry stopped in front of an exquisite flowering plant with delicate blooms of soft pink and white. "Orchids," he murmured. "They grew in the foliage around Changi, and I've seen them everywhere since I arrived in Bangkok. They are rare in England." "They are like weeds here," said Lidia. "Golly! I wish we had weeds at home like this," Harry said, thinking he must take some back to his mother.

As she fretted and paced around the room, Helen’s gaze happened to stray across an object on the table near the parlor window. Her eyes widened as she realized it was the potted Blue Vanda she had given him. The orchid he hadn’t wanted but had taken anyway. He had sent it back. Helen hurried to the orchid, wondering what condition it was in. Weak sunlight slanted across the table, flecked with glimmering, floating dust motes, some of them swirling around the light blue petals. Confusion spread through her as she saw the inflorescence of glowing blooms. The broad ovoid leaves were clean and glossy, and the roots anchored among the crushed clay pottery shards had been carefully trimmed and kept damp. The Blue Vanda hadn’t sickened in Winterborne’s care...it had thrived. Helen leaned over the orchid, touching the beautiful arc of its stem with a single fingertip. Shaking her head in wonder, she felt a tickle at the edge of her chin, and didn’t realize it was a tear until she saw it drop onto one of the Vanda’s leaves. “Oh, Mr. Winterborne,” she whispered, and reached up to wipe at her wet cheeks. “Rhys. There’s been a mistake.

My revenge fiction characters are like the orchid, who dares to bloom while its keeper is away on holiday!