To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes.

We both know, you and I, that if all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace.

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

It is only to the gardener that time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals.