 Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that “Perhaps no flower (not excepting even the queenly rose) claims to be so universal a favorite, as the viola tricolor; none currently has been honored with so rich a variety of names, at once expressive of grace, delicacy and tenderness.” Many of these names play on the whimsical nature of love, including “Three Faces under a Hood,” “Flame Flower,” “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” “Flower of Jove,” and “Pink of my John.”

In "Hamlet", Ophelia distributes flowers with the remark, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts" (IV.5).Other poets referencing the pansy include Ben Jonson, Bernard Barton, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, William Wakefield, and William Wordsworth.Nathaniel Hawthorne published his last literary effort, an unfinished piece, entitled "Pansie, a Fragment", sometimes called "Little Pansie, a fragment" in 1864.