Heirloom Garden Quotes

You don't have to be the greatest gardener in the world to make a difference--You just need a gnome. ~ Donna Hamill

You feed it all your woes, the ghostly garden grows. ~ Joni Mitchell

In a garden you can find, quiet thoughts that calm the mind. ~ Patience Strong

Paper Matches
My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That's the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
"At Your Service,"
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire. ~ Paulette Jiles

I read, go for walks and I love to garden. My hands are such a mess. People think I should have movie star hands, but they're just gardening ones. Always slightly grubby and with a bit of dirt under the fingernails. ~ Amanda Donohoe

It astounds me that out of all the flowers in the garden, the rose would fall in love with the thorn. ~ H R Brock

Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady," he had gone on rather hesitatingly. "An' mother she thinks maybe she's about Misselthwaite many a time lookin' after Mester Colin, same as all mothers do when they're took out o' th' world. They have to come back, tha' sees. Happen she's been in the garden an' happen it was her set us to work, an' told us to bring him here." Mary ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Western teaching institutions that refuse to acknowledge today's taboos are by definition subversive. Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite. Tell them there was no Garden of Creation and they will call you a dangerous cynic. Tell them God is what man invented to compensate for his ignorance of science and they will call you a Communist. ~ John Le Carre

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'
'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.
'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together. ~ Anita Brookner

Emerging, as we had, from the dark and gloomy bowels of the earth, the scene before us presented a view of wondrous beauty, and, while doubtless enhanced by contrast, it was nevertheless such an aspect as is seldom given to the eyes, of a Barsoomian of today to view. To me it seemed a little garden spot upon a dying world preserved from an ancient era when Barsoom was young and meteorological conditions were such as to favor the growth of vegetation that has since become extinct over practically the entire area of the planet. In this deep valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, the atmosphere doubtless was considerably denser than upon the surface of the planet above. The sun's days were reflected by the lofty escarpment, which must also hold the heat during the colder periods of night, and, in addition to this, there was ample water for irrigation which nature might easily have achieved through percolation of the waters of the river through and beneath the top soil of the valley. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

One bee does not make a swarm.
One wasp does not make a nest.
One wolf does not make a pack.
One bull does not make a herd.
One dog does not make a litter.
One sheep does not make a flock.
One lion does not make a pride.

One branch does not make a tree.
One pebble does not make a hill.
One rock does not make a mountain.
One dune does not make a desert.
One spark does not make a flame.
One finger does not make a hand.
One color does not make a rainbow.

One leaf does not make a plant.
One flower does not make a garden.
One seed does not make a forest.
One drop does not make an ocean.
One cloud does not make a sky.
One star does not make a galaxy.
One world does not make a universe. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I want to do something absolutely different, or perhaps nothing at all: just stay where I am, in my home, and absorb each hour, each day, and be alone; and read and think; and walk about the garden in the night; and wait, wait... ~ Rosamond Lehmann

I had no natural gift to be anything - not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches - not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me. ~ Paul Newman

Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

A garden in winter is the absolute test of the true gardener. ~ Rosemary Verey

You know the way that children play make-believe in the garden? I did that and I thought, 'This will do for life. Why would I want to do anything else?' ~ Harry Treadaway

But here we call it Spring, when a young man's fancy turns,
fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun,
to touching in the dark. And the old man's?
To worms in their garden box; stepping aside
a moment in a poem that will remember,
fitfully, who made it and the discord
and stammer, and change of heart and catch of breath
it sprang from. A bending down
lightly to touch the earth. ~ David Malouf

Funny how ready people are to believe that counseling, which even when voluntary takes years to modify garden-variety neuroses, can work wonders in months with resistant patients who hate each other. ~ Katha Pollitt

Then something altogether hideous happened. The thought was forced on me that no matter how coolly or sensibly or gracefully I might one day to learn to live my life, I would always at best be a visitor in a garden of enamel urinals and bedpans, with a sightless, wooden dummy-deity standing by in a marked-down rupture truss. ~ J.D. Salinger

A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul. ~ Saadi

The man who had served us was lounging at the counter, nodding his head in time with the music. It was a cacophonous din, with too many guitars and not enough melody. It was, I thought, the sound of madness, the kind of music that lunatics hear in their heads just before they slice the heads off foxes and throw them into their neighbour's back garden. ~ Gail Honeyman

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be aiding to grow in it. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder. Tyrion scratched at his scar and tried to recall the author's name. ~ George R R Martin

Good Mistake"

Blood on your hands
And your hands still roam
But your secret is safe with the garden gnome
Those marks on your neck never seem to fade
Bring a marching band
For the masquerade
Oh lonely man
You know you can
A pocket knife
Will serve you well
Remember what you're good for
There's much more to life

Under the sun
It's not what they can see
Until it's done
Your secret's safe with me

Blow out the candles on your cake
It's another year due with the same mistakes
Blind like a bat
When you hit that wall
Now who's gonna come
Who you gonna call
Oh lonely man
You know you can
A pocket knife
Will serve you well
Remember what you're good for
There's much more to life

Under the sun
It's not what they can see
Until it's done
Your secret's safe with me

I can see you run
I can see you're undone
Shadow to the sun
Shadow to the sun
See a rule to break
See another rule to make
It's a good mistake
Shadow next to none

Broken bones in a walking man
It's a trick to the eye
It's a rubber band
Don't let it go
Let it fall a part
It's a heavy load
For a tender heart ~ Mr. Little Jeans

write the story.
push your hands into the dirtiest parts of yourself.
take the rot & decay & turn it into nourishment & life.
water it & sing to it & show it sunlight.
grow a beautiful garden from your aching & teach yourself how to thrive from it.
write your story. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Do you see the labyrinth out there?" She waved a graceful hand toward the garden. "Life is like that labyrinth, full of pathways that seem like the right way, but end up being detours. We go one way and then another until we find our true path. ~ Belinda M. Gordon

As the wise say, a sensible man looks after his garden, and a coward looks after his money; a just man cares about his city and a crazy man cares about the government; and a wise man studies the thickness of fern-fronds. ~ Angélica Gorodischer

The Labyrinth, a walled garden where humans tortured plants and flowers into growing in straight lines and sharp corners so unnatural that it hurt the mind to see, was east of Thorn's court, on the very edge of the Center Kingdom. ~ Jon Evans

If you are a garden plant you are regarded; well regarded, just as long as you stay in the garden. ~ Davies Gilbert