... garden books are quite unconscious that besides telling us how to turn our patch of earth into a garden, they are also expressing the way their age looks at the world, the state of their society.

when people go away, or when we leave the places we love, or something we treasure goes out of our life - I have always noticed that before it happens - this leaving, this parting - when we think about it beforehand we are overwhelmed with sadness at the loss to come. ... the most unbearable sense of loss, the worst homesickness of all, so I have found, is this loss and sickness we feel beforehand, before we ever leave home.

happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of all would be the completely expendable.

children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

Understanding, above all, is a gift we should never offer uninvited.

leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.