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Who really said it

We Can Complain Because Rose Bushes Have Thorns, or Rejoice Because Thorn Bushes Have Roses

Not Abraham Lincoln — an anonymous saying, traced back to Alphonse Karr Alphonse Karr 1808–1890 · French journalist, novelist and gardener
No known originator. Karr is the earliest documented source and the point at which the idea spread; the English sentence itself has never been traced to anyone. Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator found no substantive evidence that Lincoln ever wrote or spoke this line, and traced the oldest version of the thought to a four-line French verse Alphonse Karr printed in his 1853 book Lettres écrites de mon jardin — a verse Karr introduced as though its author preferred to stay anonymous. The familiar English wording is later and anonymous still: its closest early appearance is a 1936 newspaper column that credited only “a philosopher.” Lincoln’s name was not attached to it until 2003.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“We Can Complain Because Rose Bushes Have Thorns, or Rejoice Because Thorn Bushes Have Roses” Not Abraham Lincoln. The oldest known version is a French quatrain in Alphonse Karr, "Lettres écrites de mon jardin" (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1853), p. 293 — which Karr printed as anonymous. The familiar English wording has no known author; Quote Investigator finds no substantive evidence Lincoln ever wrote or spoke it, and dates the Lincoln attribution to 2003. Via Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Abraham Lincoln. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of Alphonse Karr — French critic, journalist and novelist; editor of Le Figaro. Theme: "We Can Complain Because Rose Bushes Have Thorns, or Rejoice Because Thorn Bushes Have Roses". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We Can Complain Because Rose Bushes Have Thorns, or Rejoice Because Thorn Bushes Have Roses". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The oldest version anyone has found

Work
Lettres écrites de mon jardin
Published
Michel Lévy Frères, Paris, 1853 — the verse is on page 293
Translation
No period English translation of the verse. The familiar English sentence is a separate, later paraphrase with no known author.
Credited in the source to
Nobody. Karr presents the four lines as an author’s who would rather stay anonymous.

De leur meilleur côté tâchons de voir les choses :
Vous vous plaignez de voir les rosiers épineux ;
Moi je me réjouis et rends grâces aux dieux
Que les épines aient des roses.

Let us try to see things from their better side:
You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes;
Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods
That thorns have roses. Lettres écrites de mon jardin, 1853, p. 293

The English rendering is the one Quote Investigator gives ↗, prepared with help from two correspondents it credits by name; it is a plain translation of the French, not a historical English version. In the scanned original, Karr introduces the quatrain by saying he is slipping in four lines about roses and their thorns whose author wishes to seem to want anonymity — which is why QI treats the verse as having no acknowledged owner even at its first appearance. Note that Karr’s image is a single plant: a rose bush that has thorns. The two-bush version everybody quotes today came later, and in English.

Scanned first edition · 1853
Open page 293 of the 1853 first edition
Quote Investigator’s full chronology, 1853 to 2003

How we verified this

The exact English sentence has no identifiable author, so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for it — its closest early appearance is an anonymous 1936 newspaper column crediting “a philosopher.” The French quatrain shown above is a different matter: first published in 1853, it is comfortably in the public domain, as is the 1882 English paraphrase credited to Karr. The modern English translation of the verse reproduced here is the one Quote Investigator published in 2013 and is quoted as fair comment on their research, not as a public-domain text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Three names, none of them right

This saying has been handed to at least three different people, and the evidence for each gets thinner the more famous the name.

Abraham Lincoln Unsupported

Quote Investigator states it has located no substantive evidence that Lincoln wrote or spoke this quotation ↗, and dates the attribution to a 2003 collection, Wilderness Wisdom: Quotes for Inspirational Exploration, edited by John Gookin. Lincoln did once pair roses with thorns — in his 1850 eulogy for Zachary Taylor, saying the Presidency is no bed of roses and that General Taylor, like others, found thorns within it ↗. That is a complaint about political office, not a maxim about optimism.

J. Kenfield Morley No trace

A filler item in a Canton, Ohio newspaper credited “Morley” in April 1949, and the columnist Earl Wilson printed the fuller name in 1964 — both documented by Quote Investigator ↗. But the saying was already in print in 1936 credited to an unnamed “philosopher,” so the Morley credit post-dates the wording it is supposed to explain.

Alphonse Karr Closest, but he declined it

Karr is where the trail genuinely starts, and Victorian journals from 1882 onward credited him by name. But in the 1853 book itself ↗ he slips the four lines in with a remark that their author would rather appear anonymous — so even the earliest source declines to claim it.

Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that the saying has no known originator, though Karr was the primal locus of popularization ↗, and that the Lincoln attribution is recent and unsupported.

Context

Why this one stuck to Lincoln

The saying has an unusually well-documented life for something nobody can claim. It begins as a French joke about gardening, becomes a Victorian aphorism about Nature, passes through Unitarian journals, an evangelist’s prize contest and a lecture on the happiness habit, then a newspaper humour column, gets pinned on a man nobody can identify, and only then — in 2003, in a book of inspirational quotations for backpackers — arrives at Abraham Lincoln.

That last step is the giveaway. Lincoln is one of the internet’s great quotation magnets: a line that sounds wise, sounds American, and has no owner tends to drift toward him. What makes this case unusual is that the drift is fully visible. Quote Investigator can show you every stop on the route, and Lincoln appears at none of them until a century and a half of circulation had already happened without him.

Karr wrote the oldest version and then pretended he hadn’t. Everyone since has been happy to hand it to someone else too.

The wording changed at every stop

Karr’s 1853 quatrain is about thorns having roses — the plant is a rose bush either way, and the trick is which feature you notice. The 1882 English version in the London journal The Christian Life keeps that structure: finding fault with Nature for putting thorns on roses, versus thanking her for putting roses on thorns.

The two-bush version — a rose bush set against a thorn bush, as if they were different plants — is a twentieth-century American invention. Quote Investigator points to Roe Fulkerson’s 1929 newspaper column as the place those two terms first appear together, and to a 1936 “Office Cat” column for the first instance close to the sentence people quote today.

By 1949 a filler item in a Canton, Ohio paper was crediting it to “Morley,” and by 1964 the columnist Earl Wilson had expanded that to “J. Kenfield Morley” — a name that appears in quotation books and almost nowhere else. Lincoln arrives last.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Gratitude Happiness Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1853 to 2003quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. A dated chronology from Karr’s 1853 verse through the 2003 book that first attached the saying to Lincoln, with the conclusion that it has no known originator.
Lettres écrites de mon jardin (1853), page 293books.google.com

The scanned first edition, open at the page that carries Karr’s quatrain — the oldest documented version of the thought.
Full text of Karr’s 1853 first editionarchive.org

The Internet Archive’s scan of the same volume, searchable, including Karr’s introductory line disclaiming authorship of the verse.
Wikiquote: Alphonse Karren.wikiquote.org

Lists the verse in English translation under a sourced entry citing “Letters written from my garden”, 1853.
Lincoln’s eulogy for Zachary Taylor (1850)www.gutenberg.org

The address Lincoln really did give at Chicago on 25 July 1850 — the source of his one genuine roses-and-thorns remark, which is nothing like the popular quote.
Unfounded quotes attributed to Abraham Lincolndrloihjournal.blogspot.com

Illinois historian Neil Gale’s catalogue of fake Lincoln quotations, which lists this saying explicitly and notes there is no evidence Lincoln wrote or spoke it.

The gardener-journalist behind the oldest known version

Who Alphonse Karr actually was

Alphonse Karr

1808–1890 · French critic, journalist and novelist; editor of Le Figaro

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr was a French critic, journalist and novelist who became editor of Le Figaro in 1839 and founded the satirical monthly Les Guêpes. In 1855 he moved to Nice, took up floriculture, and practically founded the cut-flower trade on the French Riviera — which is why so many of his best-remembered lines are about gardens. He is the same writer who gave us plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, and, characteristically, he printed the roses-and-thorns verse as if it were somebody else’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Alphonse Karr, Lettres écrites de mon jardin (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1853), 293. The familiar English wording has no known author; per Quote Investigator, its closest early appearance is the syndicated column “Office Cat” by Junius, Edwardsville Intelligencer, 15 February 1936, page 4, where it is credited only to “a philosopher.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We Can Complain Because Rose Bushes Have Thorns, or Rejoice Because Thorn Bushes Have Roses’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-can-complain-because-rose-bushes-have-thorns-or-rejoice/

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