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.

My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme.

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

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

Summer makes a silence after spring.

April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year.

all the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfilment of the tyranny they had always threatened.