Garden Catalogs Quotes

Vegetable seed catalogs have replaced the penny candy store. The fireballs, the root-beer barrels, and the licorice whips aren't sold at the corner anymore. Now the sweets are sold by seed companies instead. There's "candystick" and "sweet slice" and "sugar rock" but these aren't types of candy, they are varieties of sweet corn, cucumber and musk melon. ~ Roger B. Swain

Dane lived above a greengrocer's shop at 26 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, with her secretary, Olwen Bowen, herself a writer of children's books, but who now devoted herself to the care of her companion. 'One climbed up a rickety staircase and there was Winifred, surrounded by her paintings, sculptures, a piano and goodness knows how many books, where she would give many after-the-theatre parties . . . ~ Philip Hoare

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves. ~ Leonora Carrington

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome. ~ Willa Cather

Faith is not simply a private matter, or something we practice once a week at church. Rather, it should have a contagious effect on the broader world. Jesus used these images to illustrate His kingdom.: a sprinkle of yeast causing the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt preserving a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden growing into a great tree in which birds of the air come to nest. ~ Philip Yancey

Anytime that is 'betwixt and between' or transitional is the faeries' favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational. ~ Brian Froud

Because," he said quietly as she stood up, "until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden."
Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. "What is it now?"
"Heaven. ~ Judith McNaught

Living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time ... rather, it's about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there. ~ Winifred Gallagher

For lunch, Tsipis led them to Hassadar's most exclusive locale - the official dining room of the Count's Residence, overlooking the Square. The remarkable spread which the staff laid on hinted that Miles had sent down a few urgent behind-the-scenes instructions for the care and feeding of his . . . gardener. Mark confirmed this after dessert when Kareen led Enrique and the widow off to see the garden and fountain in the Residence's inner courtyard, and he and Tsipis lingered over the exquisite vintage of Vorkosigan estate-bottled wine usually reserved for visits from Emperor Gregor. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

The most elemental difference between the machine and the garden is that one is driven by a force which must be introduced from without, the other grown by an energy which originates from within itself. ~ Steven Pinker

According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext. ~ William S. Burroughs

the habit of bed making is correlated with a sense of greater well-being and higher productivity. Other common broken windows include having a messy car; accumulating piles of laundry or trash; not being able to find important items, like a passport or a phone charger; hanging on to stacks of newspapers, magazines, and catalogs; wearing pajamas or sweats all day; or not shaving or showering ~ Gretchen Rubin

The bottom of his garden joins the bottom of ours, and of course I had several times seen him, sitting among the scarlet-beans in his little arbour, or working at his little hotbeds. I used to think he stared rather, but I didn't take any particular notice of that, as we were newcomers, and he might be curious to see what we were like. But when he began to throw his cucumbers over our wall
"
"To throw his cucumbers over our wall!" repeated Nicholas in great astonishment.
"Yes, Nicholas, my dear," replied Mrs. Nickleby, in a very serious tone; "his cucumbers over our wall. And vegetable-marrows likewise."
"Confound his impudence!" said Nicholas, firing immediately. "What does he mean by that?"
"I don't think he means it impertinently at all," replied Mrs. Nickleby.
"What!" said Nicholas, "cucumbers and vegetable-marrows flying at the heads of the family as they walk in their own garden and not meant impertinently! ~ Charles Dickens

Man designs for himself a garden with a hundred kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of flowers, a hundred kinds of fruit and vegetables. Suppose, then, that the gardener of this garden knew no other distinction between edible and inedible, nine-tenths of this garden would be useless to him. He would pull up the most enchanting flowers and hew down the noblest trees and even regard them with a loathing and envious eye. This is what the Steppenwolf does with the thousand flowers of his soul. What does not stand classified as either man or wolf he does not see at all. ~ Hermann Hesse

The education and training of children is among the most meritorious acts of humankind and draweth down the grace and favour of the All-Merciful, for education is the indispensable foundation of all human excellence and alloweth man to work his way to the heights of abiding glory. If a child be trained from his infancy, he will, through the loving care of the Holy Gardener, drink in the crystal waters of the spirit and of knowledge, like a young tree amid the rilling brooks. And certainly he will gather to himself the bright rays of the Sun of Truth, and through its light and heat will grow ever fresh and fair in the garden of life. ~ Abdu'l- Baha

There is no elegance or character of any sort in [the forsythia's] structure. Its crude expose of colour is undiluted by foliage. And in its most popular cultivars the flowers are packed into such congested lumps that it is like being asked to swallow a helping of cornflour pudding. ~ Christopher Lloyd

This is not an academic book. I have not written it for professional theologians. I have tried to write a practical book for ordinary Christians who want to hear God's voice above the clamor of everyday life. The still, small voice that spoke to Elijah in the cave is far more powerful than many of us realize. It can keep us from being bound by tradition or driven by circumstance. The voice can give us more than our own abilities to understand the Bible. Many Christians have wandered into a spiritual wilderness devoid of passion and power. Those who hear and obey the voice of God will escape that wilderness or see it changed into a garden. ~ Jack S. Deere

The Australian backyard was once built for tradesmen and outdoor toilets. As suburbs spread, it became a playground and source of pride ... ~ Pete Munro

Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath. ~ Michael Pollan

This green place in which I stood with James turned slowly around us like a music box. All my memories returning, and all his. I could see and feel each of his days and he mine. Childhood songs, books read, hearts broken, arguments forgiven.The sweetness of these imperfections far outshining the regrets. Our lives overlapped as naturally as two blades of grass brushing together.
My pain forgotten, my clothes dry and clean, I pulled James close to me. As he lifted my chin, I felt no sensation of falling as when I had been Light touching one who is Quick. It wasn't the mere heat of a stolen moment in borrowed flesh. We touched now soul to soul, both of us Light. And when we kissed, the garden rocked, floating upstream. ~ Laura Whitcomb

He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good, quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. quietly. And that would be his redemption. Even if he could add only a feather to the balance it would be some kind of repayment for being spared. When it was all over and the reckoning fell due, it may be that he would be in need of that feather. ~ Kate Atkinson

I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

She sat staring at the heavy curtains that shut out the gentle twilit garden, thinking how few things in life were un-muddled, firmly outlined as they were surely intended to be? One could organize, direct, plan each hour in advance and still the muddle persisted. Nothing in life was really water-tight, nothing secret, nothing secure. ~ Joan Lindsay

The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness. ~ Andrew Marvell

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content. ~ Neil Gaiman

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight. ~ John Henry Newman

Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses. ~ Mario Batali

How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know. ~ Ernest Henry Wilson

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. ~ Jean Rhys

The Earth is our environment to protect and the garden to tend to. ~ Pope Francis

One of the constants in life is that results are always being produced. If you don't consciously decide what results you want to produce and represent things accordingly, then some external trigger-a conversation, a TV show, whatever-may create states that create behaviors that do not support you. Life is like a river. It's moving, and you can be at the mercy of the river if you don't take deliberate, conscious action to steer yourself in a direction you have predetermined. If you don't plant the mental and physiological seeds of the results you want, weeds will grow automatically. If we don't consciously direct our own minds and states, our environment may produce undesirable haphazard states. The results can be disastrous. Thus it's critical that-on a daily basis-we stand guard at the door of our mind, that we know how we are consistently representing things to ourselves. We must daily weed our garden. ~ Anthony Robbins

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land. ~ Michael Cunningham

It is sad when man's unhappiness veils from him the smiling face of nature. The promise of the early morning was maintained. The sky was of a translucent blue, broken with islands and continents of clouds, dazzling white like cotton-wool. A soft, warm breeze blew from the west, the birds sang merrily in every garden bush, and Cullerne was a town of gardens, where men could sit each under his own vine and fig-tree. The bees issued forth from their hives, and hummed with cheery droning chorus in the ivy-berries that covered the wall-tops with deep purple. The old vanes on the corner pinnacles of Saint Sepulchre's tower shone as if they had been regilt. Great flocks of plovers flew wheeling over Cullerne marsh, and flashed with a blinking silver gleam as they changed their course suddenly. Even through the open window of the organist's room fell a shaft of golden sunlight that lit up the peonies of the faded, threadbare carpet.

But inside beat two poor human hearts, one unhappy and one hopeless, and saw nothing of the gold vanes, or the purple ivy-berries, or the plovers, or the sunlight, and heard nothing of the birds or the bees. ~ John Meade Falkner

Child development: Most damaging course of action is attempting to keep children from experience or protect them from pain, for it is this time that children learn that life is a magic thing, if "not a rose garden." The parent's role is primarily to stand by with a good supply of band-aids. ~ Leo Buscaglia

The place between actual seasons is filled with tiny roses in transition. There are murders and amputations in the garden. There are choirs on the sandy floors beneath oceans. ~ Kate Braverman

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.
I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.
I dreamed
and this dream was the finest
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you. ~ Clive Barker

It's a queer thing is a man's soul. It is the whole of him. Which means it is the unknown him, as well as the known. It seems to me just funny, professors and Benjamins fixing the functions of the soul. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. And we've all got to fit into his kitchen garden scheme of things. Hail Columbia !

The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white- skinned hordes of the next civilization.

Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off!

Oh, but Benjamin fenced a little tract that he called the soul of man, and proceeded to get it into cultivation. Providence, forsooth! And they think that bit of barbed wire is going to keep us in pound for ever? More fools they.

...

Man is a moral animal. All right. I am a moral animal. And I'm going to remain such. I'm not going to be turned into a virtuous little automaton as Benjamin would have me. 'This is good, that is bad. Turn the little handle and let the good tap flow,' saith Benjamin, and all America with him. 'But first of all extirpate those savages who are always turning on the bad tap.'

I am a moral animal. But I am not a moral machine. I don't work with a little set of handles or levers. The Temperance- silence-order- resolution-f ~ D.H. Lawrence

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden. ~ Voltaire

Acknowledgements!
My thanks to Hollywood
When you showed me John Rambo
Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
And giving them "a war they won't believe"
I knew then my calling, the job for me

Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
And for sending sergeants to our school
To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
The camaraderie

I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
One year basking in the Garden of Eden
(I haven't quite left yet)

Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
Fuck it,
Thanks to every parent
Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
Waiting at the airport
Waving their flags ~ Danny Martin