192 Rose Quotes as Symbols of Everything Beautiful and Pure

No wonder the rose is named the king of flowers. When such natural beauty can be defined with meaning in its colors, then it is more than just a flower. Roses have a symbolic versatility and have been so celebrated for such a long time. Amazingly, a single stemmed one has the power to express the deepest feelings, such as love in red, friendship and hope in yellow, white in purity and beautiful pink in joy.

The world’s best poems have used its name and numerous rhymes have been created with its use. However, it’s their representation of passion and romance that have made them the most popular flower around the world concerning all ages. Here you will find a great variety of quotes, most beautiful, most romantic and many, many more, honoring this amazing flower. They will inspire and help express feelings and thoughts of beauty.

Table of Contents

1. The Symbol of a Rose
2. Short Rose Quotes and Rose Captions for Flower Photos
3. Quotes About Roses and Thorns
4. Inspiring Rose Quotes
5. Rose Love Quotes
6. Red Rose Quotes
7. White Rose Quotes
8. Quotes About Roses and Beauty
9. Rose Quotes in Poems

The Symbol of a Rose

Throughout history and across cultures, the rose has stood as an enduring symbol of multifaceted emotions and concepts. With its exquisite petals and delicate fragrance, the rose manages to encapsulate a myriad of meanings, transcending its botanical existence. Often associated with beauty, love, purity, and even life’s thorny challenges, the rose serves as a universal emblem that resonates with the human experience. In this section, we explore the profound symbolism that the rose carries, unraveling its layers of significance that have inspired poets, writers, and dreamers for generations.

Short Rose Quotes and Rose Captions for Flower Photos

In these succinct expressions, discover the perfect words to accompany your captivating rose snapshots.

• One rose is enough for the dawn. Edmond Jabes
• The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms. Angelus Silesius
• It is at the edge of the petal that love waits. William Carlos Williams
• Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet. Katharine Lee Bates
• I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. Emma Goldman
• Roses are red, violets are blue, I’ll never love someone the way I love you. Anonymous
• Take time to smell the roses. Proverb
• World without poetry is like a lover without a rose. Shiny
• Forgiveness is the scent that the rose leaves on the heel that crushes it. Anonymous
• A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world. Leo Buscaglia
• When love first came to Earth, the Spring spread rose-beds to receive him. Thomas Campbell
• When life throws thorns, hunt for roses. Anonymous
• The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. Hada Bejar

• If all we had were roses, would the thorns then be beautiful? Kamand Kojouri
• Roses aren’t red, the detail is. Dominic Riccitello
• Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem. Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
• Live in Thorns but always enchant the hearts with your fragrance. Alok Jagawat
• At middle age the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage. John Andrew Holmes
• What a lovely thing a rose is! Arthur Conan Doyle
• But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• There may be many flowers in one’s life…but only one rose. Unknown
• A rose is a rose is a rose. Gertrude Stein
• Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. Richard B Sheridan
• Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. William Shakespeare
• Come out here where the roses have opened. Let soul and world meet. Rumi
• She who loves roses must be patient and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns. Olga Brouman
• Life is like a rose garden — watch for the thorns and keep the pest dust handy. Anonymous
• Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle may not grow. Frances Hodgson Burnett
• A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses. Chinese Proverb
• That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses. “Save them for my funeral,” I’d said. Sylvia Plath
• The world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends. Persian Proverb
• Their lips were four red roses on a stalk. William Shakespeare
• Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy. Rita Moreno
• Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns. Leigh Bardugo
• If you really screw up, send roses. Letitia Baldrige
• Roses are like kamikaze love pilots. Roses are like suicide love bombers. Olivia Sudjic
• A relationship is like a rose. How long it lasts, no one knows. Rob Cella
• Roses are red, violets are blue, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t get them from you. Anonymous
• A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won’t come true. Ray Evans
• I’d love to wake up to complete silence, white sheets, and the smell of crisp air and roses. Maria Elena
• A rose to the living is more than sumptuous wreaths to the dead. Nixon Waterman
• For the rose, though its petals be torn asunder, still smiles on, and it is never cast down. Rumi
• The rose is fairest when it is budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears. Sir Walter Scott
• I don’t know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice. Roland A. Browne
• But he that dares not grasp the thorn. Should never crave the rose. Anne Bronte
• The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviousy a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot. Salvador Dalí
• Focus your energy on the fragrance and beauty of the petals not on the thorns. Amit Ray
• From the thorn bush comes forth the rose. Old Jewish Proverb
• Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time. Edmund Spenser
• God gave us memories so that we might enjoy roses in December. J.M. Barrie
• I was too busy admiring the petals that I forgot about the thorns. Orion Carloto
• There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Ralph Waldo Emerson

• I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses. James Joyce
• If I had a rose for every time I thought of you, I’d be picking roses for a lifetime. Swedish Proverb
• If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears. Isaac Hayes
• In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love. Bahá’u’lláh
• The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it. Chinese Proverb
• It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees. George Eliot

• Like freshly cut roses, I place life in a vase… of love. Kamand Kojouri
• My life is part humor, part roses, part thorns. Bret Michaels
• Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I. Oscar Levant
• She did not need anyone else’s love when she had roses. Rumi
• She is lovelier than all the roses in the world! Avijeet Das
• That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. William Shakespeare
• The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud. Jos Saramago
• The point is to turn your grief into love. The roses are helping you find grace. Rumi
• The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart. Unknown
• Those who don’t pick roses in summer won’t pick them in winter either. German Proverb
• True friendship is like a rose, we don’t realize its beauty until it fades. Anonymous
• Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art. Louisa May Alcott
• You hope you’ve found that special rose, ‘Cause you love and care for the one you chose’. Rob Cella
• Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last. Charles De Gaulle
• You’d get a lot more work done if you didn’t stop and smell the roses so often. Anonymous
• It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one. Valerie

Quotes About Roses and Thorns

Exploring the dual nature of roses, where thorns and beauty entwine in a metaphorical dance.

• Thorns and roses grow on the same tree. Turkish Proverb
• Truths and roses have thorns about them. Henry David Thoreau
• A rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorn. Rumi
• No rose without a thorn. French Proverb
• The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses. Ovid
• Some thorns have roses. Hope Bollinger
• He who wants a rose must respect her thorn. André Gide

• A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom. Chinese Proverb
• A rose, isn’t quite as beautiful as it once was, when after its thorn pricks you. Anthony Liccione
• Life may be a bed of roses, but roses still have thorns. Matshona Dhliwayo
• I’d rather let you cover all my roads with thorns than with dead roses. Nema Al-Araby
• The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together. Saadi
• You cannot accept the beauty of a rose without the accompanying thorns. Jeffrey G. Duarte
• Roses fall, but the thorns remain. Dutch Proverb
• If you are among the roses, your friends will look for you among the thorns. Swedish Proverb
• The gardener who loves roses is slave to a thousand thorns. Turkish proverb
• I have brought you the rose of love, and you have crowned me, in these dark hours, with their thorns. Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
• 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
• Poetry without truth, is like a rose without thorns. Still pretty, But sometime the real beauty comes from the things that can make us bleed. Cody Edward Lee Miller
• The one who afraid of the pricking roses, plunged himself into an abyss without petals. Nur Bedeir
• The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose. Kahlil Gibran
• We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorns have roses. Alphonse Karr
• Why are roses kept for their blossoms rather than shunned for their thorns? J. Aleksandr Wootton
• Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses. Alphonse Karr
• 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
• And if not for the caterpillars and butterflies, who will I talk to? You’ll be far away. And as for larger creatures, I’m not afraid. I have my thorns…to protect me. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• ‘ I love you,’ he whispered, and kissed my brow. ‘Thorns and all’. Sarah J. Maas
• 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.
• The rose does not bloom without thorns. True, but would that the thorns did not outlive the rose. Richter
• There is no gathering the rose without being pricked by the thorns. Panchatantra
• Discipline trains you to put up with disappointments, every rose has a thorn. Sai Baba
• You can’t gather much if you won’t go on risk expedition. Leaders never fear the thorns; they’ll still go in for the beautiful roses no matter the number of pricks they’ll get. Israelmore Ayivor
• One can talk good and shower down roses, but it’s the receiver that has to walk through the thorns, and all its false expectations. Anthony Liccione
• 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
• She is a rose, Jest. Lovely on the eyes, yes, but such thorns are not to be ignored. Marissa Meyer
• Some of the most beautiful things worth having in your life come wrapped in a crown of thorns. Shannon L. Alder
• You may bend, but that will not bring your life to an end. Your refusal to give up is the key; your rose flowers blossom from the thorns of life! Israelmore Ayivor
• Holding grudges is like growing a garden of thorns in your heart. Thandazo Perfect Khumalo
• … You shouldn’t be afraid to hold on to something beautiful, even if there are thorns in your path. If you want something, sometimes you have to take risks. And when you do, you reap wonderful rewards. Jen Calonita
• Flowery tongues have thorny throats. Kirush Muser
• … Look at a rose plant that is full of thorns… there are more thorns than flowers — but we do not call it a thorn plant. We call it a rose plant because of that single rose. Everyone’s attention goes more towards that single rose than a hundred thorns that are on the plant, isn’t it? So all the thorns in you, maybe you cannot remove them right now, but if one rose flower blossoms, everyone is willing to overlook those things. Jaggi Vasudev

Inspiring Rose Quotes

Immerse yourself in a collection of rose-inspired quotes that uplift the spirit and stir the soul.

• It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…People have forgotten this truth, but you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• 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
• 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
• 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
• La Vie En Rose. It is the French way of saying, ‘I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses. Audrey Hepburn

• A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring. William Carlos Williams
• The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. Paulo Coelho
• Do not watch the petals fall from the rose with sadness, know that, like life, things sometimes must fade, before they can bloom again. Anonymous
• We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today. Dale Carnegie
• If the rose puzzled its mind over the question how it grew, it would not have been the miracle that it is. J. B. Yeats
• 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

Rose Love Quotes

Delve into the realm of love as these quotes intertwine the enchantment of roses with matters of the heart.

• Love is still a bed of roses. It’s the people who bring along their thorns. Nitya Prakash
• Love and a red rose can’t be hid. Thomas Holcroft
• This love is the rose that blooms forever. Rumi
• Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. Mark Overby
• Love sees the thorns but cherishes the rose anyway. Jeffrey Fry
• A woman is like a rose…If you take good care of her, you will see love blossom. Anonymous
• In the orchard and rose garden I long to see your face. In the taste of Sweetness I long to kiss your lips. In the shadows of Passion I long for your love. Rumi
• 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
• A mother’s love is like an everlasting bed of roses, that continues to blossom. A mother’s love bears strength, comfort, healing and warmth. Her beauty is compared to a sunny day that shines upon each rose petal and inspires hope. Ellen J. Barrier
• True love is like little roses, sweet, fragrant in small doses. Ana Claudia Antunes

• Love is the only thing in this whole universe, that can make the roses grow out of the swords. Akshay Vasu
• … 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
• My love is like a rose divided into two, the leaves I give to others, but the rose I give to you. Anonymous
• 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
• A life filled with love, must have some thorns, but a life empty of love will have no roses. Anonymous
• I breathe in … the fragrance of love, and moist sand the one his roses left on both my hands. I just keep on breathing every moment as much as I can preserving it, in my body for the day it can’t. Sanober Khan
• Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly? Emily Brontë
• I like to think that love is like a rose. A rose that is beginning to sprout is like a person feeling love for the first time. It will grow in time as the couples interact and along the way, they may hurt themselves by the thorns of pain and misunderstanding. But it is all worth it to see the rose in full bloom as the two share their true love. What happens after that is unknown. The rose may last forever and create others, or it may wither away and start anew. Michelle Goncalves

Red Rose Quotes

Uncover the passionate allure hidden within the velvety petals of the red rose through these eloquent quotes.

• When you transplant a rose, transplant the reddest one. Marty Rubin
• The rose is a flower of love. The world has acclaimed it for centuries. Pink roses are for love hopeful and expectant. White roses are for love dead or forsaken, but the red roses, ah the red roses are for love triumphant. Unknown
• 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
• 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
• Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them. Patrick Rothfuss

White Rose Quotes

Journey into the purity and elegance encapsulated by the white rose, as words paint its untarnished beauty.

• From off this brier pluck a white rose with me. William Shakespeare
• 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
• Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose. For whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed. William Shakespeare
• Whenever I have a problem, I ask the Saint (Thérèse of Lisieux) not to solve it, but to take it into her hands and to help me accept it and I almost always receive a white rose as a sign. Pope Francis
• I can’t have white roses. They symbolize death. Nina Arianda
• 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

Quotes About Roses and Beauty

Reflect on the profound connection between roses and the essence of beauty that graces both nature and life.

• Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all. Crystal Woods
• 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
• Beauty without virtue is like a rose without scent. Anonymous
• If the rose is beautiful flower, it is also because it opens itself. Charles De Leusse
• The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness. St. Therese de Lisieux
• Her lips? The early morning rose would whither on the branch if it could feel envy. William Shakespeare
• Something with inner beauty will live forever, like the scent of a rose. Alex Flinn

• Rose never propagandize its fragrant, but its own fragrance spreads surrounding. Sukarno
• Beauty and love pass, I know… Oh, there’s sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses. F Scott Fitzgerald
• . . . Τhese roses, only half awake, in the defenselessness of utter beauty. Willa Cather
• I should own up that for me, growing roses is all about creating a cheap supply of fabulous, favorite blooms. I’m no Martha Stewart; I just love cutting flowers and bringing them into the house where I can focus on their beauty. Jane Eastoe
• Which is loveliest in a rose? Its coy beauty when it’s budding, or its splendor when it blows? George Barlow
• I’ve come to believe that the true splendor of roses shines through their reflection in the eyes of our loved ones. That is why we give roses to people we love; to show them the reflection of beauty and splendor of love in our own eyes, as we see it in their eyes. Mawuena Addo

Rose Quotes in Poems

Experience the fusion of lyrical artistry and floral wonder as these poetic quotes pay homage to the rose’s timeless appeal.

• Tis the last rose of summer
  Left blooming alone;
  All her lovely companions
  Are faded and gone.
  Thomas Moore
• Ash on an old man’s sleeve
  Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
  T.S. Eliot
• The Rainbow comes and goes,
  And lovely is the Rose.
  William Wordsworth
• You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
  But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
  Thomas Moore.
• But the rose leaves herself upon the brier,
  For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed. John Keats
• O withered rose! How can I still call you a rose?
  How can I call you the longing of nightingale’s heart?
  Allama Muhammad Iqbal
• 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
• If love were what the rose is,And I were like the leaf,
  Our love would grow together
  In sad or sighing weather.
  Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Life is uncertain.Today you get a rose.
  Tomorrow you feel the thorns.
  But the end result is red, always!!
  Shillpi S Banerrji
• Of all the flowers,Methinks a rose is best.
  It is the very emblem of a maid.
  William Shakespeare
• Love is a rose, but you’d better not pick 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.
  Linda Ronstadt
• And the rose like a nymph to the bath add
  rest,Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
  Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air,
  The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
  Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 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
• When the night has been too lonely
  And the road has been too long,
  And you think that love is only
  For the lucky and the strong,
  Just remember in the winter
  Far beneath the bitter snows
  Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
  In the spring becomes the rose.
  Amanda McBroom
• Have you heard the story of the roseThat blooms in the night?
  Without the sun’s presence
  She grew from her own light.She did not yearn for
  His warmth on her petals
  For she knew she held the power
  To radiate light from within.Though she had strong thorns
  Her heart was always open
  For those with an open heart
  Can never be broken.
  Allie Michelle
• 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
• Anyone knows you can train a rose
  To be a clingin’ vine!
  So, from this day hence, there’ll be a picket fence
  ’round that ramblin’ rose of mine!
  Joe Sherman
• My poor worried heart was almost certain
  That this love affair would never be
  Then I sent a dozen yellow roses and
  From that moment, she belonged to me.
  Andy Williams
• By brooks too broad for leaping
  The lightfoot boys are laid;
  The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
  In fields where roses fade.
  A. E. Housman
• Here’s a blush rose, with raspberry scent.
  Here’s a pink, come taste the edge.
  And here, my dear, upon the stair,
  is simply the hip of a white-blue rose
  I’ve carried up to bed.
  L.L. Barkat
• 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
• You are like a rose
  Soft, glowing and evolving
  It’s time for you
  To let go of the deadly thorns
  Never trust
  The guy who claims
  He misses you but never puts
  In effort to actually
  Set plans with you
  Fall in love
  With someone
  Who helps you to fly high
  And not with someone
  Who cannot lift you up
  When you crash down
  You are like a rose
  Soft, glowing and evolving
  It’s time for you
  To let go of the deadly thorns.
  Jyoti Patel
• Mischievous rose from the rose-tree swaying,
  Can I not bind thee nor hold thee?
  Can I not weave thee nor fold thee
  In with thy sisters to staying?
  Vain is my passion or praying,
  Rose from the rose-tree swaying.
  Dora Sigerson Shorter
• You treat me like a rose
  You give me room to grow
  You shone the light of love on me
  And gave me air so I can breathe
  You opened doors I closed
  In a world where anything goes
  You give me strength so I stand tall
  Within this bed of earth
  Just like a rose.
  Ben Adams
• Finally moon went away
  And I brooded up to skies
  Did his eyes met my face?
  Yes they did,With thud of love
  Fell on the velour of roses.
  Atif Khurshid Wani

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