A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.

a letter, by its arrival, defrauds us of a whole secret region of our existence, the only region indeed in which the true pleasure of life may be tasted, the region of imagination, creative and protean, the clouds and beautiful shapes of whose heaven are destroyed by the wind of reality.

Successful gardening is not necessarily a question of wealth, it is a question of love, taste, and knowledge.

One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling.

Travel is a private pleasure, since it consists entirely of things felt and things seen.

For bees are captious folk / And quick to turn against the lubber's touch.