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Water Lily Quotes

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.

Claude Monet
Thinking, Water Lily, Lilies

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Lying, Swans, Water Lily
John Greenleaf Whittier (1873). “The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.306

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Mirrors, Water Lily, Cracks
'The Lady of Shalott' (1832, revised 1842) pt. 3

In a marshland amongst the crocodiles, there float beautiful water lilies! Even in the Hell, one can find the good and the beauty.

Mehmet Murat Ildan
Beautiful, Water Lily, Lilies

The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.

Daniel Quinn
Whales, Water Lily, Spiders
Daniel Quinn (2010). “The Story of B”, p.324, Bantam

The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Freedom, Rain, Water Lily

And you're too nice," he added, above the lap-lap of the water and the patter of sand on the water-lily leaves. "I was relying on you being too jealous to let that demon near the place.

Diana Wynne Jones
Nice, Jealous, Water Lily
Diana Wynne Jones (2002). “Wizard's Castle”

Where Cezanne captured and intensified shards of the eternal (every pear far more sharply defined than it could be in life), Monet portrayed the changeability and flux of every moment. 'The Water Lilies' give you a jittery, amorphous sense of a world seen at the speed of light.

Jerry Saltz
Light, Water Lily, Giving

Everyone knows French artist Claude Monet's "Water Lilies," which he painted in his garden. You find the images everywhere from galleries to dorm rooms and dentists' lounges.

Ari Shapiro
Artist, Garden, Water Lily
Source: www.npr.org

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end.

Anna Sewell
Book, Water Lily, Tree
Anna Sewell (2012). “Black Beauty”, p.9, Courier Corporation

I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person.

Maurice Sendak
Beautiful, Book, Water Lily
The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. November/December 2012.

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