Who wrote the sentence 'a rose is a rose is a rose'?

Gertrude Stein's repetitive language can be said to refer to the changing quality of language in time and history. She herself said to an audience at Oxford University that the statement referred to the fact that when the Romantics used the word "rose" it had a direct relationship to an actual rose. For later periods in literature this would no longer be true. The eras following romanticism, notably the modern era, use the word rose to refer to the actual rose, yet they also imply, through the use of the word, the archetypical elements of the romantic era. It also follows the rhetoric law of thricefold repetition to emphasize a point, as can be seen in speeches dating back to the sophists.