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.

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

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.

Lettuce is like conversation; it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.

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.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

In onion is strength; and a garden without it lacks flavour. The onion, in its satin wrappings, is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is the only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost be said to have a soul.