The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.

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.

For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career.

I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them.

Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, / For every bee becomes a drunken lover, / Standing upon his head to sup the flowers.

how poor and disheartening a thing is experience compared with hope!

Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.