in the city at best one lives the life of others, the life of the shop, the street, the crowd, while in the country one must live one's own life.

Neither a garden nor a gardener can be made in one year, nor in one generation even.

Why is it that so many people think that charity consists in giving away merely what they cannot use instead of the article the recipient needs?

it is really astonishing how few colors are inharmonious when they are profusely massed and have green for a background.

what is life worth if one has nothing to give away? This lack, it seems to me, must be the sharpest pang of poverty.

I have always noticed that when people consider others eccentric, it is because they are reveling in some form of enjoyment that their critics can neither compass nor share.

Let everyone who makes garden plans frequently insert the letters C.P. in them as a reminder, the same standing for climate permitting.

It doesn't so much matter what one loves. To love is the transfiguring thing.

Mother love is invariably held sacred, as it should be, but why has father love never had its due?

Surely there is no greater garden for human-nature study than the flotsam and jetsam of the hospital.

even as human vitality is at its lowest ebb in the early morning, so it is with plant life in the early spring.

Look at your own behaviors and ask yourself, “Would I want to be my friend???

Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.

It's a bitter truth but we humans are the only creature in this universe who not only fed up with things but also by other human beings.

Harpists spend half their life tuning and the other half playing out of tune.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

Ah, love. A dreadful bond! And yet, so easily severed.

Reason is often a more powerful persuader than gold.

Fear of God failing us leads us to "cover for God." This means we ask, expect, and are satisfied with less.

A specialist is someone who does everything else worse.