57 Peonies Quotes to Kindle Your Admiration of This Flower

Peonies are one of the most elegant flowers around. Many have taken inspiration in their beauty and have created peonies quotes.

In this list of peonies quotes, learn about the joys and pains of love with our peony love quotes and get the motivation and the willpower you need from our inspirational peony quotes.

Peonies Quotes

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The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty. — Robertson Davies

Once lively peonies now
wind-weary, and ragged
at the edges, hang their heavy
crowns; rain on their backs,
one final act, before
detaching from the stem
and falling down. — Kristen Henderson

I’m saddened by the peonies before the steps, so red,
As evening came I found that only two remained.
Once morning’s winds have blown, they surely won’t survive,
At night I gaze by lamplight, to cherish the fading red. — Bai Juyi

Garden season deepened. The lantern flies winked and blinked. Poppies flaunted their scarlet robes. Ants feasted in the peonies, and protected them from invaders. — Jeanette Lynes

In Tick’s opinion there was something extravagantly excessive about the peony from the start, as if God had intended so suggest with this particular bloom that you could have too much of a good thing. The swiftness with which the fallen petals bean to stink drove the point home in case anybody missed it. — Richard Russo 

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers — Mary Oliver

Peonies are beautiful perennials. A classic, really. Every garden should have them. They’re dependable, have a timeless, elegant beauty and will bloom with very little attention. — Christine Feehan

what would it be like if i thought i was pretty
what would it be like if i carried that knowledge around
like i do the knowledge that i am a writer
pretty like peonies pretty like satin pretty like the child i was
would i speak to you differently
would i be healthier less stressed
less worried — Francesca Lia Block

The peonies were more opulent than usual and I walked slowly through the green light on the terrace above the white river, enjoying the heavy odor of peonies and of new roses rambling in hedges. — Gore Vidal 

The fact that a flower as gentle and delightful as the peony should be so exacting and dictate such harsh terms hits me with the force of a cold shower. It’s just like my girlfriends when I was a teenager, it was always the loveliest and most yielding ones who ran everything. — Bodil Malmsten

Peonies are a gift from the heavens above. I mean, just look at this flower, so big and round. The ruffled petals that look like they belong on a ball gown? Absolute perfection. — Heather Webber

There isn’t a corner that we missed; and, in no time at all, I will forget the wretchedness of this winter. Soon, I will only smell peonies and calla lilies…
— Heather Angelika Dooley

Peonies for good health. A willow branch for luck. Cotton stems for prosperity. The fleshy leaf of a jade to bring harmony. And a lotus for resilience. — Raven Kennedy

Everywhere she looked, she saw the rewards of her careful planning and judicious pruning. The beds were a riot of glorious color, with sugary pink saucer-sized roses, ruffled yellow peonies, spiked purple delphinium. — Kristin Hannah

Yet, when one came to think of it, the only flowers that were really perfect were those, like the peonies that went so well with one’s charming room, that possessed the added grace of having been presented to oneself. — Barbara Pym

From the heart of the sweet peony,
a drunken bee.
— Matsuo Bashō

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

Did you know your mom saved peony starts from your grandma’s garden after she died, and then passed them along to me? It’s a way to keep family alive, to keep the memory of those we love in our home, no matter where we live or how much time has passed. — Wade Rouse

Dirt is chaos, gritty, full of bugs and decay, but from that dirt comes such immense beauty. Roses, tulips, tomatoes, peonies, raspberries, oranges, magnolias…and even me. — R.S. Grey

There was a bunch of pale pink peonies in a tin jug on the table. Peonies are her favourite flower. They stand for ‘shame’ in the Victorian language of flowers. — Lucy Atkins 

And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, and touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken. — Siegfried Sassoon

When she’d been young, she’d had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn’t understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. — David Wroblewski

Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies
and next to it black binoculars and a money clip,
exactly the kind of thing we now prefer,
objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, — Billy Collins

The peonies are up, the red sprouts,
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living. — Ted Kooser

History, a reasonable goddess, a frozen statue in the middle of the town square. Dried bunches of peonies are her annual tribute; her daily gratuity, bread crumbs for the birds. — Éric Vuillard

You may know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way. — Vincent van Gogh

Still, the flowers were growing right along with them, miniature roses and hydrangea, lavender and peonies, magenta and red and pink and purple flowers. And not just in the garden, but all around, the orchard was bursting with green, and smells, and birds singing until long after dark. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

But this is the time they like to grow, the red flowers, the shining red peonies which are like satin, which are like splashes of paint. The soil for them is emptiness, it is empty space and silence. — Margaret Atwood

Below that was the thrum of bumblebees climbing in and over and around the peonies. Getting lost. Bumbling around. It looked comical, ridiculous. But then so much did, unless you knew. — Louise Penny

Had I but four square feet of ground at my disposal, I would plant a peony in the corner and proceed to worship. — Viola Shipman 

Peony Love Quotes

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I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I’m sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character. — Justina Chen

“My peony,” he emphasized. “And it’s only for us, no one else.” He liked the intimacy of having a special name for her no one else knew but the two of them.” — Christine Feehan

The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout. — E. Lockhart 

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

Take, my love, this peony,
that transformed sun into honey. — Beryl Dov

in peony lips
and bee sting nips

in velvety nape
like petal — Kirli Saunders

I equate peonies with love because they’re the first blooms of summer. – Isaac Mizrahi

Peony celebrated a happy marriage and home; chamomile provided patience; and a vibrant bunch of fresh basil brought with it good wishes. — Karma Brown

That’s why I like to grow and share starts of plants with others—like your grandmother’s peonies—because it’s like sharing a memory with the world. […] It’s a way to keep family alive, to keep the memory of those we love in our home, no matter where we live or how much time has passed. — Wade Rouse

Inspirational Peony Quotes

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Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. — Ray Bradbury

It takes six million grains of pollen to seed one peony, and salmon need a lifetime of swimming to find their way home, so we mustn’t be alarmed or discouraged when it takes us years to find love or years to understand our calling in life. — Mark Nepo

All the accomplished gardeners I know are surprisingly comfortable with failure. They may not be happy about it, but instead of reacting with anger or frustration, they seem freshly intrigued by the peony that, after years of being taken for granted, suddenly fails to bloom. They understand that, in the garden at least, failure speaks louder than success. By that I don’t mean that the gardener encounters more failure than success (though in some years he will), only that his failures have more to say to him—about his soil, the weather, the predilections of local pests, the character of his land. — Michael Pollan 

Where do dreams come from? […] They slink out of books, they lurk in the stacks of libraries. Out of pages turned they rise like the scent of peonies and infect the brain with their promises. — Marge Piercy

I want to leave
no one behind.
To keep&
be kept.
The way a field turns
its secrets
into peonies.
The way light
keeps its shadow
by swallowing it. — Ocean Vuong

Women are so hard on themselves, calling their looks ordinary, holding themselves up to standards of beauty set by men. Does a Susan consider itself any less beautiful than a peony? Does a wildflower growing in a ditch think of itself as less than one growing in a garden? No! So why do we? — Viola Shipman

Lawns, it seems to me, are against nature, barren and often threadbare – the enemy of a good garden. For the same trouble as mowing, you could have a year’s vegetables: runner beans, cauliflowers and cabbages, mixed with pinks and peonies, shirley poppies and delphiniums; wouldn’t that beautify the land and save us from the garden terrorism that prevails? — Derek Jarman

Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone. What will can do, and the only thing it can do, is make time in which to do it. Young poets, enraged because they don’t get published right away, confuse what will can do and what it can’t. It can’t make a tree peony grow to twelve feet in a year or two, and it can’t force the attention of editors and publishers. What it can do is create the space necessary for achievement, little by little. — May Sarton

The scent of peony is the scent of the absence of negativity. — C. JoyBell C.

After a long gray winter, these first pink and yellow blooms shout, “Something’s happening!” By May they’ll have gone green with the rest of the yard, a quiet before the peonies and hydrangea bloom. — Annabel Monaghan

At sunset, the sky billowed into mile-wide peonies, hardly an arm’s length above me, and it felt like a visitation, like God was replacing the breath in my lungs. — Jia Tolentino

Reading peonies quotes may not be your preferred way of gaining more wisdom in your life, but if it works, it works! In this collection, we hope you found what you were looking for in the romance department with our peony love quotes and received inspiration with our inspirational peony quotes.

Which of our quotes did you like the best? Don’t just comment your favorite peony love quotes. Get those creative juices flowing by creating original peonies quotes! Let all those feelings out by writing your own peony love quotes or inspirational peony quotes!

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