Quotes: Life philosophy from the garden

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This collection of Quotations is Sponsored by:

Flowers are words which even a babe may understand.

                                                          - Arthur Cleveland Case -

 FlowersKeepLight7822s.jpg

Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.


- Theodore Roethke -
see What's Coming Up #148

 

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

                 - Thornton Wilder -
                    see What's Coming Up #35

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 The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.

- D.H. Lawrence -
see What's Coming Up #27

 

Man masters Nature not by force but by understanding. 

- Jacob Bronowski -

Give me a spark of Nature's fire.
That's all the learning I desire.

- Robert Burns -

At the heart of gardening there is a belief in the miraculous

- Mirabel Osler -
see What's Coming Up #164

Failure is enriching your compost pile.

- Anne Raver -
see What's Coming Up #22

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Watching something grow is good for morale. It helps us believe in life.

- Myron S. Kaufmann, in The Natural Habitat Garden -
see Growing Concerns #759 and What's Coming Up #76

We must learn to appreciate the innate wisdom of nature's chaos.

- Neil Diboll, Prairie Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #33 and What's Coming Up #79

Gardens also teach us to live more in the moment - to listen, to watch, to touch and to dream.

- James van Sweden -
see What's Coming Up #72

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Flowers are restful to look at.  They have neither emotions nor conflicts.

- Sigmund Freud-
see What's Coming Up #77

 

February... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it is wasteful folly    
to wish that time would pass, or -- as the puritanical old saying used to have it --
to kill time until it kills you.

Snowy3531s.jpg    - Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons, 1949 -

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Anxious gardeners are always looking over their shoulders.

- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #53

There are far too many self esteem problems in the world as it is.
No sense taking on plant guilt, too.

 SelfEsteem3458s.jpgSmallRedFlower7216.jpg

- Janet Macunovich -
see Growing Concerns #759

Until... some captious imp of a plantling from the High Sierras... flourishes as if at home in the surroundings you have made for it with your bungling hands and a prayer in your heart. It is then that your crushed spirit will lift and soar..."

- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #81

The odd thing about common sense is that it isn't very common.

- Voltaire -
see What's Coming Up #96

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us

- Voltaire -
see What's Coming Up #106

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

- Erma Bombeck -

   

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A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible destruction.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

 

In spring at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

                                                       - Margaret Atwood -
                                                                        see What's Coming Up #39

Let no one be discouraged by how much there is to learn.

                                                           - Gertrude Jekyll -
                                                                               see What's Coming Up #52

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There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.  

- Mahatma Ghandi-
see What's Coming Up #67

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

                                             - Robert Louis Stevenson -
                                                    see What's Coming Up #67

The Golden Age was never the present Age.

     - Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack , 1750-
        see What's Coming Up #74

What is a butterfly? At best
He's but a caterpillar drest...

- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack, 1740 -
see What's Coming Up #99

Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.

- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125

In a well-made garden every day is new.

- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting Garden -
see What's Coming Up #85

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Strolling with my girlie where the dew is pearly early in the morning,
Butterflies all flutter up and kiss each little buttercup at dawning,
If I had Aladdin's lamp for only a day,
I'd make a wish and here's what I'd say:
Nothing could be finer than to be with

Carolina in the morning.

- Song lyrics by Gus Kahn, from Carolina in the Mornin' -
see What's Coming Up #112

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

- Mark Twain -
see What's Coming Up #113

Earth laughs in flowers.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
see What's Coming Up #127

 

 

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

- Bertrand Russell

PickensCrnrB4s.jpg PickensCrnrAftrS.jpg In the most beautiful gardens amid glorious diversity, that's where we have seen these words displayed, baked into a ceramic tile for the permanency they rate, "I don't remember planting this."

Our England is a garden and such gardens are not made
By singing "Oh, how beautiful", and sitting in the shade.

- Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of the Garden, 1911 -

While working among the little plants of the far places of the world we forget the narrowness of our own orbit.

- Louise Beebe Wilder, in Pleasures and Problems of a Rock Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125 and What's Coming Up #153

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Snowdrops: Theirs is a fragile but hardy celebration... in the very teeth of winter.

     - Louise Beebe Wilder -
      see What's Coming Up #139

 

 

What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds

- Will Rogers -
see What's Coming Up #164

A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.

- Richard Briers -

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Nature is always hinting at us.

- Robert Frost -

"It is not enough merely to exist," said he, "I need freedom, sunshine, and a little flower for a companion."

- Hans Christian Andersen, in The Butterfly -
see What's Coming Up #167

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The cool night air will do me good... I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars to become acquainted with the butterflies... As for the large animals -- I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws.

- The rose, in her farewell to The Little Prince -
see What's Coming Up #166

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We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference.

- John W. Gardener -

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

- John W. Gardner in The Pursuit of Excellence -
see What's Coming Up #174

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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