Great news -- "Life's a bed of roses!"  From The Film Daily, 1941.

From Little Jack Rabbit's Big Blue Book by David Cory, 1924.

In our experience, there's so little that a little cleansing oil and a crystal rose can't solve.  From Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna Handbook.

From Tulane's 1916 yearbook.  See This Book is a Cactus.

From the Estherian Literary Society's 1914 yearbook.

Last we checked, the hardcover of this one was approaching a thousand dollars: A Queer Kind of Death by George Baxt, 1966.

Thorns and stingers.  From Bunte Kriegsbilderbogen, 1915.

Androcles and the lion.  From Europa's Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs and illustrated by John Batten, 1916. 

A rose is a rose, unless a daisy is a rose.  On the cover of this manual, we see a field of white squares and a single red one, as if all the other roses in the garden were changed into daisies.

From Visual Machine /System Product Editor User's Guide, Release 6, 1988.

A rose is a peacock feather.  From Rosa Amorosa by George Egerton, 1901.

From Fliegende Blätter, 1924.

From Fliegende Blätter, 1924.  See the astonishing This Book is a Cactus.

"So they followed the rose past the pretty houses of the flowers."  From The Wonderful Land of Up by Olive Roberts Barton and illustrated by Neely McCoy, 1918.

"The Skull and the Rose."  From The Singing Mouse Stories by Emerson Hough, 1910.

From Fliegende Blätter, 1925.  See This Book is a Cactus.