Of course I should love to throw a toothbrush into a bag, and just go, quite vaguely, without any plans or even a real destination. It is the Wanderlust.

There is something intrinsically wrong about letters. For one thing they are not instantaneous. ... Nor is this the only trouble about letters. They do not arrive often enough. A letter which has been passionately awaited should be immediately supplemented by another one, to counteract the feeling of flatness that comes upon us when the agonizing delights of anticipation have been replaced by the colder flood of fulfilment.

It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.

It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means.

Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong.

Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth.

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.