La flur de France as perdut. The flower of France is lost.

-Anonymous
c.1110  Chanson de Roland, l.2445.

Al night by the rose, rose, Al night by the rose I lay, Dorst ich nought the rose stele, And yet I bar the flour away.

-Anonymous
c.1210^1240  Untitled lyric.

He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the ba'; And the bonnie Earl of Murray Was the flower amang them a'. He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the glove; And the bonnie Earl of Murray, O he was the Queen's luve. O lang will his lady Look owre the castle Doune, Ere she sees the Earl of Murray Come sounding thro'the toun.

-Ballads
'The Bonnie Earl of Murray'.

L'amour a son instinct, il sait trouver le chemin du coeur comme le plus faible insecte marche a'   sa fleur avec une irre¤  sistible volonte¤   qui ne s'e¤  pouvante de rien. Love has its own instinct. It knows how to find the road to the heart just as the weakest insect moves towarditsflowerbyanirresistiblewillwhichfearsnothing.

-Balzac, Honore¤   de
  La Femme de trente ans.

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: Job he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job14:1^2.

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms103:15^16.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the L hand double for all her sins. The voice of himthat crieth in the wilderness,Prepare ye the way of the L, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valleyshall be exalted,and everymountainand hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the L shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the L hath spoken it. The voicesaid,Cry. And hesaid,What shall Icry? All flesh isgrass, and all thegoodlinessthereof isastheflowerof the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the L bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORD'SORDORDORDORDIsaiah 40:1^8.

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Peter1:24.

To see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

-Blake,William
c.1803  Auguries of Innocence, l.1^4.

The moth's kiss, first! Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed Its petals up.

-Browning, Robert
  Dramatic Lyrics,'In a Gondola'.

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment whiteöthen melts for ever.

-Burns, Robert
  'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

His coomb was redder than the fyn coral, And batailled as it were a castle wal; His byle was blak, and as the jeet it shoon; Lyk asure were his legges and his toon; His nayles whitter than the lylye flour, And lyk the burned gold was his colour.

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Of Chauntecleer. Canterbury Tales,'The Nun's Priest's Tale', l.2859^64.

   The mysterious East, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.

-Connor, Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra
  'Youth'.

Strength and beautyare the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

-Democritus
Fragment quoted in H Diels and W Kranz (eds) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol.2 (1952), no.294.

It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell†and when a whirlwind hathblownthedustofthechurchyard intothe church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce,This is the Patrician, this the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran.

-Donne,John
c.1621 Of death. Sermon, 8 Mar.

What use the green river, the gold place, if time and death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest from taking underground the green all-willowed and white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?

-Frame,Janet Paterson also known as Jean PatersonFrame
Owls Do Cry, pt.1, ch.4.

Full manya gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full manya flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

-Gray,Thomas
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.52^6.

Nocht is your fairnes bot ane faiding flour, Nocht is your famous laud and hie honour Bot wind inflat in uther mennis eiris.

-Henryson, Robert
c.1470  The Testament of Cresseid, stanza 65.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying: And this same flower that smiles to day, Tomorrow will be dying.

-Herrick, Robert
  'To the Virgins, to Make Much of  Time'.

I always held my flower in a clenched fist.

-Hoffer, Eric
  On his social activism as a1960s flower child. Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture.