The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favorites; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.

I think that the worst unpleasantness of age is not its final fact ... but the tediousness of preparation, the accumulating number of defeats.

The art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.

We were not for underestimating magic - a life-conductor like the sap between the tree-stem and the bark. We know that it keeps dullness out of religion and poetry. It is probable that without it we might die.

All our acts have sacramental possibilities.

In one form or another, conscious or unconscious, we have all become propagandists; integrity alone can keep us truthful.

Conventions are like coins, an easy way of dealing with the commerce of relations.