Perhaps the way with any obsession is to ignore it simply. Not to fight it, since it draws strength from any contact with us, whether hostile or friendly.

A garden is one of the few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.

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.

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.

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.

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

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