Charles Dudley Warner Quotes

I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden... name things as I find them.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

It is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other side.

Women are not as sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspoken poetry of nature, being less poetical, and having less imagination; they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make fewer failures in business.

Politics make strange bedfellows.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.

A boy has a natural genius for combining business with pleasure.

Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit.

There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds and also when it is stirred up goes into the man who stirs it.

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

The world is full of poetry as the earth is of pay-dirt; one only needs to know how to strike it.

Isolation breeds conceit.

Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.

A cynic might suggest as the motto of modern life this simple legend-"just as good as the real.

Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.

Goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire.

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, but needs some practice to be a good one

The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.

Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element in the world which continually destroys and recreates.

You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.

There are those who say that trees shade the garden too much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may be something in this:but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring down my face, I should be grateful for shade.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man?

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him, as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.

There is no beauty like that which was spoiled by an accident; no accomplishments and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of.

The most popular persons are those who take the world as it is who find the least fault.

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest.

What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be!

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.

If there was any petting to be done...he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented.

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not.

A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.

Snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is sometimes the prophecy of better things.

The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation.