Caring
Generosity, Care, Sharing, Compassion


Quotes for Gardeners and Lovers of the Green Way

Compiled by Karen and Mike Garofalo

Spirit of Gardening Website

 

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"Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn't care deeply."
-  Vita Sackville-West, Autobiography, 1920

 

 

"All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed ...."

-  Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second April, 1921  

 

 

"What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated, if he were in their place."
-  Thomas Henry Huxley  

 

 

"We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers."
-  Seneca  

 

 

"The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow."  

 

 

"The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm."
-  Swedish proverb  

 

 

"Those that are wasters and willful spoilers of trees and plants, without just reason to do so, have
seldom prospered in this world."
-  Moses Cook  

 

 

"A kind word is like a spring day."
-  Russian proverb  

 

The Art of Happiness by the Dali Lama, 2009. 

Heart of Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism by Karuna Erickson and Andrew Harvey, 2010. 

Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg, 2003.  

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, 2011.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life by Jack Kornfield, 1993. 

 

"As the biocentric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence.  A balance is struck.  Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism, all meld together to provide nurturance."
-  Jim Nollman, Why We Garden, The Sentient Garden  

 

 

"One must care about a world one will never see."
-  Bertrand Russell  

 

 

"He who shares the joy in what he's grown,
Spreads joy abroad and doubles his own."
-  Author unknown  

 

 

"You don't have a garden just for yourself.  You have it to share."
-  Augusta Carter  

 

 

 

 

"The best things that can come out of the garden are gifts for other people."
-  Jamie Jobb  

 

 

"Hospitality is a form of worship."
-  The Talmud 

 

 

"Kind hearts are the garden,
kind thoughts are the root,
kind words are the blossoms,
kind deeds are the fruit."  

 

 

"Carrying capacity  ...   Caring Capacity."
-  Marlene Mountain, nature talks back  

 

 

"A person who cares about the earth will resonate with its purity."
-  Sally Fox  

 

 

"Gardening helps us to carefully attend to the close at hand.  
The best thing that grows in the garden is a careful gardener. 
Your rich, famous, and handsome; and, your garden doesn't care. 
Gardens are not inherently meaningful in many ways; but, making a garden and caring
     for it creates meaningfulness.  
If you plant it, they will come."  

-   Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions  

 

 

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such
superb colour effects as from August to November."
-  Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905  

 

 

"Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully.  He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained." 
-  Jerzy Kozinski   

 

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, 2011.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, 2004. 

The Solitary Druid: A Practitioner's Guide by Robert Lee Skip Ellison, 2005. 

Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks by Gary Thorp, 2001. 

 

"You're giving a part of yourself when you grow a plant and give it to somebody else."
-  Art Scarpa 

 

 

"A profusion of pink roses being ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring."
-  William Carlos Williams  

 

 

"A garden is a grand teacher.  It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust."
-  Gertrude Jekyll  

 

 

Recommended Reading 

 

Cheerfulness  

Heart of Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism by Karuna Erickson and Andrew Harvey, 2010. 

Spirituality in the Garden 

Lifestyle Advice for Wise Persons 

Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg, 2003.  

One Old Druid's Final Journey

 

 

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The Spirit of Gardening Website

Over 3,800 Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Quips, One-Liners, Clichés, Quotes, and Insights
Arranged by Over 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Over 20 Million Webpages (excluding graphics) Served to Readers Around the World
       From January 1, 1999 through December 31, 2010
This webpage has been online since January 2003. 
Compiled by Karen Garofalo and Mike Garofalo from Red Bluff, California
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Last Updated: February 21, 2011

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