"The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot"
About this Quote
The rose comparison is a stand-in for every once-shocking image that gets laundered into a lazy default. What begins as perception ("her cheeks really do bloom like that") calcifies into a prefab phrase you can pull off the shelf. Dali's punch comes from how he escalates the moral judgment: not "unoriginal", not "trite", but "possibly an idiot". It's a deliberately cruel calibration, the kind that makes you laugh and wince because it recognizes how quickly culture turns invention into wallpaper.
Context matters: Dali is a Surrealist brand of one, an artist who lived by the logic of estrangement - taking what seems familiar and making it strange again, or exposing how strange it always was. In that light, the quote is less about women than about the deadening effect of convention. When language ossifies into cliche, it stops seeing; it starts signaling. The subtext is a dare: if you're going to borrow, at least do the work of re-seeing. Otherwise you're not communicating beauty, you're just recycling a password.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Dali, Salvador. (2026, January 18). The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-first-man-to-compare-the-cheeks-of-a-young-17500/
Chicago Style
Dali, Salvador. "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-first-man-to-compare-the-cheeks-of-a-young-17500/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-first-man-to-compare-the-cheeks-of-a-young-17500/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2026.










