There are about a dozen of these gardens, more or less extensive, according to the business or wealth of the proprietor; but they are generally smaller than the smallest of our London nurseries.

The Chinese, by their favourite system of dwarfing, contrive to make it, when only a foot and a half or two feet high, have all the characters of an aged cedar of Lebanon.

The plants which stand next to dwarf trees in importance with the Chinese are certainly chrysanthemums, which they manage extremely well, perhaps better than they do any other plant.

We all know that any thing which retards in any way the free circulation of the sap, also prevents to a certain extent the formation of wood and leaves.

One marked feature of the people, both high and low, is a love for flowers.

The plants are principally kept in large pots arranged in rows along the sides of narrow paved walks, with the houses of the gardeners at the entrance through which the visitors pass to the gardens.

Stunted varieties were generally chosen, particularly if they had the side branches opposite or regular, for much depends upon this; a one-sided tree is of no value in the eyes of the Chinese.

Nature generally struggles against this treatment for a while, until her powers seem in a great measure exhausted, when she quietly yields to the power of the art.

A small species of pinus was much prized, and, when dwarfed in the manner of the Chinese, fetched a very high price; it is generally grafted on a variety of the stone pine.

We are told that the first part of the process is to select the very smallest seeds from the smallest plants, which is not at all unlikely, but I cannot speak to the fact from my own observation.

Leaders learn more from blames than praises. Praises make them know what’s already done well

If God is your coach, you score the most amazing and unbelievable goals

God is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.

You can't solve your problems by using the same thinking that got you into those problems in the first place.

Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.

Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life.

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

The love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction?

Well: the day is a poem but too much Like one of Jeffers's, crusted with blood and barbaric omens Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk's cry.

Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.