If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died.
Ruth StoutFarmers are philosophical; they have learned that it is less wearing to shrug than to beat their breasts. But there is another angle to their attitude. Things happen rapidly in the country; something new always comes along to divert them and it isn't necessarily another calamity.
Ruth StoutOnly in the winter, in the country, can you have longer quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.
Ruth StoutWhen we contemplate buying something, we usually ask the price of it, then decide whether or not it is worth that much to us. But when we expend time and energy, we often just go ahead and pay.
Ruth Stoutthe bliss that comes from ignorance should seldom be encouraged for it is likely to do one out of a more satisfying bliss.
Ruth StoutWorking in the garden . . . gives me a profound feeling of inner peace. Nothing here is in a hurry. There is no rush toward accomplishment, no blowing of trumpets. Here is the great mystery of life and growth. Everything is changing, growing, aiming at something, but silently, unboastfully, taking its time.
Ruth StoutThe unmulched garden looks to me like some naked thing which for one reason or another would be better off with a few clothes on.
Ruth StoutWhy do people who like to get up early look with disdain on those who like to lie in bed late? And why do people who like to work feel superior to those who prefer to dream?
Ruth StoutThere is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.
Ruth StoutFarmers are philosophical. They have learned that it is less wearing to shrug than to beat their breasts.
Ruth StoutThe central paradox and challenge of marriage is that we have to make family out of someone we're not related to.
Ruth StoutWorking in the garden gives me something beyond the enjoyment of the senses. It gives me a profound feeling of inner peace.
Ruth StoutYou know how some people seem to think that their love for classical music makes them spiritual or at least something quite special? And others who think you are a monster if you don't 'love children,' however obnoxious the children may be? Well, I found out that many people who love flowers look down on those who don't.
Ruth StoutTo the Memory of those faithful brown slave-men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who during the war while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night-watch over otherwise unprotected women and children -- a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal.
Ruth Stout