Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
The many great gardens of the world, of literature and
poetry, of painting and music,
of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul
cannot
thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human;
and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.
- Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, 1996,
p. 101
And oh if there be an Elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this!
- Thomas Moore. 1779-1852
There is more pleasure in making a
garden than in contemplating a paradise.
- Anne Scott-James
I do not understand how anyone can
live
without one small place of enchantment to turn to.
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
A garden is the best alternative
therapy.
- Germaine Greer
Without the body, the wisdom of the
larger self cannot be known.
- John Conger
We belong to no cult. We are
not Nature Lovers.
We don't love nature any more than we love breathing.
Nature is simply something indispensable, like air and
light and water, that we accept as necessary to living,
and the nearer we can get to it the happier we are.
- Louise Dickenson Rich
Nature poets can't walk across the
backyard
without tripping over an epiphany.
- Christian Wiman
I did however used to think,
you know, in the woods walking,
and as a kid playing the the woods, that there was a kind of
immanence there - that woods, a places of that order, had a
sense, a kind of presence, that you could feel; that there was
something peculiarly, physically present, a feeling of place
almost conscious ... like God. It evoked that.
- Robert Creely, Robert Creely and the Genius
of the American Common Place (Tom Clark), p. 40
When you touch a body, you touch the
whole person,
the intellect, the spirit, and the emotions.
- Jane Harrington
Connection with gardens, even small
ones, even potted plants, can
become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and
looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.
- Patricia R. Barrett, The Sacred Garden
Natural objects themselves, even when
they make no claim
to beauty, excite the feelings, and occupy the imagination.
Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature.
We recognize in it an Infinite Power.
- Karl Wilhelm Humboldt
The first act of awe, when
man was struck with the beauty
or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience.
- Henryk Skolimowski
“A man should hear a little
music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life,
in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful
implanted in the human soul.”
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe
"Even before I could speak, I
remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our
hillsides.
I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation
between Spirit and Nature.
Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of
separation -
that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different.
However, at my early age it
seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church
of all; that the temple
of the forest was the supreme temple. When I went to the sanctuary of the
mountain, I found Earth's
natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine. Years later I discovered that
this path of going into Nature,
bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and
Great Spirit - was
humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and
realization."
- John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
In all things of nature there is something
marvelous.
- Aristotle
It is only when you start a garden -
probably after age fifty -
that you realize something important happens every day.
- Geoffrey B. Charlesworth
A little too abstract, a little too
wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
- Robinson Jeffers
Quotes for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 3,300 Quotes, Arranged by 140 Topics
Many of the Topics also have Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
When we touch this domain, we are
filled with the cosmic force
of life itself, we sink our roots deep into the black soil and draw
power and being up into ourselves. We know the energy of the
numen and are saturated with power and being. We feel grounded,
centered, in touch with the ancient and eternal rhythms of life.
Power and passion well up like an artesian spring and
creativity dances in celebration of life.
- David N. Elkins, The
Sacred as Source of Personal Passion and Power
Your garden will reveal yourself.
- Henry Mitchell
Work without contemplation is
never enough.
- Douglas Steere
A person who cares about the earth
will resonate with its purity.
- Sally Fox
Religion - Quotes for Gardeners
In the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many
cases of mastering
the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what
awakening the mind
for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting
wayfarer;
Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku.
... Working with
plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain
enlightenment.
- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master
Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31
Consult the Genius of the Place
in all.
- Alexander Pope
Spirituality is like a bird:
If you hold it too closely, it chokes,
And if you hold it too loosely, it escapes.
- Israel Salanter Lipkin
Your mind is a garden,
your thoughts are the seeds,
the harvest can be either flowers or weeds.
- Author Unknown
Enlightenment is just another word
for feeling comfortable
with being a completely ordinary person.
- Veronique Vienne
There is a little plant called
reverence in the corner of my soul's garden,
which I love to have watered once a week.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I Welcome Your Comments and Suggestions
When the healthy nature of man acts
as a whole, when he feels himself to be
in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious
ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience
itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its
own becoming and essence.
- Goethe
Nature holds the key to our
aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive
and even spiritual satisfaction.
- Edward O. Wilson
"Speaking of today, I do not consider it
intellectually respectable to be a partisan in matters of religion.
I see religion as I see other basic fascinations as art and science, in which
there is room for many
different approaches, styles, techniques, and opinions. Thus I am not
formally a committed member
of any creed or sect and hold no particular religious view or doctrine as
absolute. I deplore missionary
zeal, and consider exclusive dedication to and advocacy of any particular
religion, as either the best or
the only true way, as almost irreligious arrogance. Yet my work and life
are fully concerned with
religion, and the mystery of being is my supreme fascination, though, as a
shameless mystic, I am
more interested in religion as feeling and experience that as conception and
theory."
- Alan Watts, In My Own Way, p. 61, 1972
"Gardening helps us
realize somatically, viscerally, the laws of growth and gradual unfolding.
We can't pull the plants up to make them grow, but we can help facilitate and
midwife their blooming,
each in his own way, time, and proper season. I have learned a little about
patience and humility from my gardens.
It's so obviously not something I'm doing that creates this miracle!
I also like to reflect upon and appreciate the exquisitely, evanescent,
transitory, and poignant nature of things in the garden.
If you love the Dharma, you have to farm it.
Go to a garden
And just stand in it.
Breathe in the air, the fragrances,
the light, the temperature,
the music of the different plants, insects, birds, worms,
caterpillars, grasshoppers, and butterflies.
Inhale the prana (cosmic energy) of all the abundantly
growing things.
Recharge your inner batteries.
This is the joy of natural meditation."
- Lama Surya Das, "Awakening to the Sacred," 1999
A person who undertakes to grow a garden
at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the
economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us....
What I am saying is that if we
apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have
begun to make
fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to
mistrust and to
change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the
earth's ability to produce.
- Wendell Berry, 1970
In a field I am the absence of field.
That is always the case.
Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and
always the air moves in to fill the space where my body has been.
We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
- Mark Strand
Do not, I beg you, look for anything
behind phenomena.
They are themselves their own lesson.
- Goethe
The comfortable and comforting people
are those who look upon the bright side of life;
gathering its roses and sunshine, and making the most that happens seem the best.
- Dorothy Dix
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.
- Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915
I have come to terms with the future. From this day onward I will
walk easy
on the earth. Plant trees. Kill no living things. Live in
harmony with all
creatures. I will restore the earth where I am.
Use no more of its resources
than I need. And listen, listen to
what it is telling me.
- M. J. Slim Hooey
We are here and it is now.
Further than that
all human knowledge is moonshine.
- Henry L. Mencken
In this light, my spirit saw through
all things and into all
creatures, and I recognized God in grass and plants.
- Jacob Boehme
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath
of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all.
- Rumi
A little group of thatched cottages
in the middle of the village had an
orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue
sky seen through the white clusters of apple blossom in spring. I
remember being moonstruck looking at it one morning early on my
way to school. It meant something for me; what, I couldn't say. It
gave me such an unease at heart, some reaching out towards
perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the
transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold on life.
- A. L. Rowse
Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible
green.
- Henry David Thoreau
There are points of time, of distant
memory, when the soul
unites within the pattern of the universe. That union brings
forth the understanding of life's harmony. So it should be
within the garden ...
- Author Unknown
Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we
stoop than when we soar.
- William Wordsworth, 1798
"For a person
who cultivates wisdom or true knowledge, the results are inner peace,
satisfaction, patience, respect for others, freedom from duplicity, compassion,
joyfulness, and remembrance of his spiritual identity..."
- Chris Butler
Speaks
Gardens will be the
peaceful haven we all need.
- Paul Tukey
The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
- Albert Einstein
I've read all the books but one
Only remains sacred: this
Volume of wonders, open
Always before my eyes.
- Kathleen Raine
When I see
Heaven and earth as
My own garden,
I live that moment
Outside the Universe.
- A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings, p. 53
The point in life is to know what's
enough--
why envy those otherwold immortals?
With the happiness held in one inch-square heart
you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.
- Gensei (1623-1668), Poem Without a Category
The Enlightened Heart, Edited by Stephen Mitchell, p. 86
Attachment to spiritual things is ...
just as much
an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
- Thomas Merton
.... all blades of grass, wood, and
stone, all things are One.
- Meister Eckhart
The trees reflected in the river --
they are
unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them.
So are we.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Mental sunshine will cause the
flowers of peace, happiness and prosperity to
grow upon the face of the earth. Be a creator of mental sunshine.
- Kathi's
Garden
The secret of beginning a life of deep awareness and sensitivity lies in our willingness to pay attention. Our growth as conscious, awake human beings is marked not so much by grand gestures and visible renunciations as by extending loving attention to the minutest particulars of our lives. Every relationship, every thought, every gesture is blessed with meaning through the wholehearted attention we bring to it. In the complexities of our minds and lives we easily forget the power of attention, yet without attention we live only on the surface of existence. It is just simple attention that allows us truly to listen to the song of a bird, to see deeply the glory of an autumn leaf, to touch the heart of another and be touched. We need to be fully present in order to love a single thing wholeheartedly. We need to be fully awake in this moment if we are to receive and respond to the learning inherent in it.
- Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
The atmosphere of our time is fast
being cleared
of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during
the carboniferous age of theology.
- John Burroughs, The Light of Day, 1900.
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope,
A scene beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree:
The pure serene of memory of one man,--
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
- Theodore Roethke
Acts of creation are ordinarily
reserved for gods and poets.
To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
- Aldo Leopold
"Enlightenment is just another word for feeling comfortable
with being a completely ordinary person."
- Veronique Vienne
There is no language of the holy.
The sacred lies in the ordinary.
- Deng Ming-Dao
For thirty years I have been in search of the swordsman;
Many a time have I watched the leaves decay
and the branches shoot!
Ever since I saw for once the peaches in bloom,
Not a shadow of doubt do I cherish.
- Ling-Yün and the Peach Blossoms
D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, 1953, 2nd Series, p. 145,
In our everyday garden grow the rosemary, juniper,
ferns
and plane trees, perfectly tangible and visible. For these
plants that have an illusory relationship with us, which in
no way alters their existentiality, we are merely an event,
an accident, and our presence, which seems so solid, laden
with gravity, is to them no more than a momentary void in
motion through the air. Reality is a quality that belongs to
them, and we can exercise no rights over it.
- Leo Lionni
For
optimal health, we need body and spirit, exercise (ming) and
meditation, awareness of the inner world and the outer. In other
words, health requires balance and moderation. The goal of qigong
may be summarized as xing ming shuang xiu, "spirit and body
equally refined and cultivated." Cultivate your whole being, as
you would cultivate a garden - with attention, care, and even love."
- Ken Cohen, Essential Qigong,
2005, p. 2
Then all at once in late August's
heat, tall leafless stalks crowned
with iridescent pink and purple blossoms burst from the purgatory
in the earth. This arcane act of nature, though perceived by us as
ordinary, is a manifestation of Maya's phantom play, the great
immensity expressed in every way. My garden is the universe.
I am the universe. I am my garden. All things are the same.
- Duane Michals, The Vanishing Act, speaking about the
Lycoris, Resurrection lily
Gardens are not created or made, they
unfold,
spiraling open like the silk petals of an evening
primrose flower to reveal the ground plot of the
mind and heart of the gardener
and the good earth.
- Wendy Johnson
Re-earthing is the process of
re-connecting ourselves with the earth.
Practically, we learn to nurture the soil and grow the things we need;
psychologically we become 'grounded' and more balanced as we
develop our awareness of how the earth under our feet supports and
connects us; emotionally we gain a sense of well-being, when we
connect with it as our home; intellectually we learn more about it at
every opportunity; metaphysically we honour it as one of the four
elements; and, on the spiritual plane, we learn to respect and reverence
the Earth, as a manifestation, or, if you so believe, the divine
creation, of life energy, whose evolutionary history from the
beginning of the universe all beings share.
Urban Permaculture and Urban Ecology: Re-Earthing the Cities
The human tendency to regard little things as important
has produced very many great things.
- Georg Chistoph Lichtenberg
In our bodies, in this moment, there
live the seed impulses of the change
and spiritual growth we seek, and to awaken them we must bring our
awareness into the body, into the here and now.
- Pat Ogden
Touching - Quotes For Gardeners
God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here;
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.
- Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
The invariable mark of wisdom is to
see the miraculous in the common.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A callused palm and dirty fingernails
precede a Green Thumb.
Complexity is closer to the Truth.
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.
Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature? Whack!!
The only Zen you'll find flowering in the garden is the Zen you bring there each
day.
Dearly respect the lifestyle of worms.
All enlightened beings are enchanted by water.
Becoming invisible to oneself is one pure act of gardening.
Priapus,
lively and naughty, aroused and outlandish, is the Duende
de el Jardin.
Inside the gardener is the spirit of the garden outside.
Gardening is a kind of deadheading - keeping us from going to seed.
The joyful gardener is evidence of an incarnation.
One purpose of a garden is to stop time.
Leafing is the practice of seeds.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions
The source of nature is spirit.
- Larry Gates, The Spiritual Naturalist
The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass,
speaks to me.
The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars,
the trail of the sun,
the strength of fire,
and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.
And my heart soars.
- Chief Dan George
Above the Fog: Zen and Taoist Poetry
There is a twofold
meaning in every creature, a literal and a mystical,
and the one is but the ground of the other.
- John Smith
Paradise is exactly like where you
are
right now ... only much, much better.
- Laurie Anderson
And every stone and every star a
tongue,
And every gale of wind a curious song.
The Heavens were an oracle, and spoke
Divinity: the Earth did undertake
The office of a priest; and I being dumb
(Nothing besides was dumb) all things did come
With voices and instructions...
- Thomas Traherne, Dumbness, 17th Century
The glory of gardening: hands in the
dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.
To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. Share the
botanical bliss of gardeners through the ages, who have cultivated philosophies
to apply to their own - and our own - lives:
Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
- Alfred Austin, 1835-1913
Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere,
wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation.
- William H. Sheldon
When one Buddha who perfected the
Way
beholds the Dharma world,
all those in the plant-and-tree realms,
without exception,
attain Buddhahood.
- Keami, Nue (a No
libretto), circa 1440
Vegetable Nirvana by Ito Jakuchu
I think this is what hooks one to gardening:
it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
- Phyllis Theroux
The more contemplative gardener,
seeing the garden as a whole, the design of it,
and its nature as a still place of delight and refreshment, will wait and hope for
the moment when it seems to achieve perfection. Awareness of when such
moments are most likely helps to make them happen; they will not be entirely
accidental but anticipated; everything will be planned to encourage them.
- Susan Hill and Rory Stuart, Reflections from a Garden,
1995
There exists an abundance of evidence
to indicate that mind-changing
drugs have been used since remotest antiquity by many of the peoples
of the earth, and have importantly affected the course of human history.
The plant sources of these drugs--the visionary vegetables--have been
worshiped as gods in many times and places, and the persons employing
the drugs as a means of acquiring "super-natural powers'' have been the
priests, prophets, visionaries, and other leaders of their respective societies.
East and West, civilized and primitive, religious thought and all that flows from
it almost certainly has been importantly influenced by the psychedelic drugs...
- R.E.L. Masters and Jean Houston,
The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, 1966, p. 36.
I prefer to their dogma my excursions into
the natural gardens
where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of
birds, the rippling of might waters, the sweet breathing of
flowers, and a wee child toddling in a wonder world. If this
is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.
- Gertrude Simmons Bonnin,
"Zitkala-Sa"
Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.
- Emily Dickinson
Interconnectedness. Spirit and
body chemistry. Loving intention.
Living with awareness of oneness with all aspects of life - including
each other and food - lies at the heart of enlightened eating and the
mystery of food's ability to nourish both body and soul. By approaching
food meditatively and with loving intention, we may go beyond the level
of thought and intuit the sacred connection between
Mother Earth, food, and humankind.
- Deborah Kesten, Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul,
p. 217
If not ignored, nature will cultivate
in the gardener a sense of
well-being and peace. The gardener may find deeper meaning
in life by paying attention to the parables of the garden. Nature
teaches quiet lessons to the gardener who chooses
to live within the paradigm of the garden.
- Norman H. Hansen, The Worth of Gardening
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace.
You will find
that deep place of
silence right in your room,
your garden or even your bathtub.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
A research project in Australia,
entitled "The Congruent Garden: an
Investigation into the Role of the Domestic Garden in Satisfying
Fundamental Human Needs," interviewed gardeners on the values of
gardening in their everyday lives. The researcher, Mike Steven,
established that gardens have the potential to satisfy nine basic human
needs (subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation,
leisure, creation, identity, freedom) across four existential states
(being, having, doing and interacting.)
- Mike Steven, Lecturer in Landscape Studies,
University of Westen Sydney, Australia
I believe that the universe is one being,
all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they
are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole.
(This is physics, I believe,
as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks
and stars; none of
them seems to me important it itself, but only the whole. The whole is in all its
parts so beautiful, and is
felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of
it as divine. It seems
to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace,
freedom, I might
say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather
than inwards on
one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions - the world of the
spirits.
- Robinson Jeffers, 1934
When you enter a grove
peopled with ancient trees, higher than
the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined
branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of
the place then strike you with the presence of a deity?
- Seneca
Spirituality and Gardening, Part II
Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul
Simplicity and the Simple Life
Pulling
Onions
Quips and Observations by Michael P. Garofalo
Haiku Poetry - Links and References
Cliches for Gardeners and Farmers
The
History of Gardening Timeline
From
Ancient Times to the 20th Century
Short Poems and Haiku by Michael P. Garofalo
Quotes for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A
Collection Growing to Over 3, 300 Quotes, Arranged by 135 Topics
Many
of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled
by Michael P. Garofalo
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo
Spirituality - Quotes for Gardeners, Part I.
Last updated on March 18, 2008
Green Way Research
The History of Gardening Timeline
Spirituality and Gardening, Part II
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong