Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses. - Alphonse Kar

A rose is an argument. It proclaims the triumph of beauty over brutality, of gentleness over violense, of the ephemeral over the lasting, and of the universal over the particular. The same rose bursts into bloom on the North Cape and in the Sahara desert. - Alain Meilland

And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
- John Boyle O’Reilly

It is at the edge of the petal that love waits." - William Carlos Williams

Interesting bit of information from Wikipedia - The White Rose was a non-violent resistence group of students and a professor from the University of Munich that started an anonymous leaflet campaign against Hitler's regime. They were eventually captured by the Gestapo and executed by beheading. They're honored in Germany as heroes for rising up against the Third Reich.