Some rose quotations for baby Isabella to go with her cardigan:

The world is a rose, smell it and pass it to your friends

(Persian proverb).

Rose detail from child’s embroidered cardigan

Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.

(Edward Bulwer-Lytton, C19th writer and author of ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’)

Rose embroidered baby cardigan

 One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.

(Dale Carnegie, American writer and self improvement guru.)

Rose embroidered baby cardigan: back view

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage concludes that it will also make a better soup.

(H.L.Mencken, American journalist, essayist and satirist.)

Rose embroidered baby cardigan: right front

 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

(Isaiah 35:1) 

Rose embroidered baby cardigan: left front

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we do not take,

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose garden 

T.S.Eliot 

Rose embroidered baby cardigan: back

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

(Gertrude Stein)

 Isabella is now 15 months old. I  bought  this soft cotton cardigan from Marks and Spencers and hand embroidered the roses.

Rose quotations for Isabella’s parents

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt and longest serving First Lady of the United States.)

and a final quote, as the acerbic wit of Dorothy Parker has to appear somewhere:

Why is it no one ever sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Ah no, it’s always my luck to get one perfect rose.