In looking back we remember only the triumphant consummations of each season. Failures and frustrations are forgotten; garden-memories are as perfect as garden-hopes.

Winter sunshine is a fairy wand touching everything with a strange magic. It is like the smile of a friend in time of sorrow.

This is the divine moment when we can hold the fairest blossom of spring in one hand and the sweetest flowers of early summer in the other.

If you want good roses, sharpen your knife and harden your heart.

It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it.

Every noble achievement is a dream before it is a reality just as the oak is an acorn before it is a tree.

The trees change their voices in autumn as well as their shapes. No longer do they whisper to one another in muffled tones as they did in summer; they talk in a different leaf-language now. The wind moves through the boughs like fingers drawn across the strings of a harp filling the air with the harsh dry sound of sapless leaves. It is the main theme of the autumn music, this murmuring counterpoint of dead leaves.