Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

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.

the large black slugs ... come out at dusk. Enormous slugs. As big as crocodiles. So huge we need a gun to shoot them. And by the end of the summer, if they go on growing, we shall have to go out in pairs together for protection.

... 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.

Enthusiasm is a plant which grows variously in the varying soils of different natures.

Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.