On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.

Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Living without an aim, is like sailing without a compass.

What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.