Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Wordsworth contrasts a scientific or utilitarian view of nature with an aesthetic one, suggesting the flower is appreciated for its own sake.
In plain terms
He sees the flower as just a flower, with no hidden meaning or use.
What can you take from it?
Value things for what they are, not just for what they do.

Where it applies

  • studying art
  • observing nature
  • philosophical debate

Putting it to work

  • appreciate simple objects
  • avoid overanalyzing

Questions to consider

  • How do you define value in everyday objects?

Another view

This view ignores how understanding a flower's biology can also deepen appreciation.

More from William Wordsworth

  1. There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like the c…

    Permalink to quote #3
  2. I traveled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

    Permalink to quote #5
  3. And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.

    Permalink to quote #2

Related quotes

  1. Wistaria sprays, as they trail in the breeze, suggest softness, gentleness, reticence. Disappearing and then appearing again in the early summer greenery, they…

    Yasunari KawabataYasunari Kawabata quote #20
  2. Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid…

    Robert FrostRobert Frost quote #22
  3. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woo…

    Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson quote #53