There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life.... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet.

I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling.

Autumn in felted slipper shuffles on, Muted yet fiery.--Vita Sackville-West