If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden.

the urgent crowds out the essential.

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.

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

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

A collection of plants is not a landscape, any more than a list of choice words is a poem. The merit is in the design, not the material it is expressed in, and the best designs, like the best poems, make ordinary material significant by its arrangement.

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