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

For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation.

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

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

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

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

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.