Still others make gardens because it is
part of a full life. To live happily they must invest their
hours and aspirations in the activities of another world. And they draw the
interest of delight and
refreshment according to the measure of their investment. These are usually quaint
folk, other-worldly
in their manner, but capable of comprehending the idiosyncrasies of Nature as she displays
them in
a tree and bush and passing season, across the skyline and in the infinite
zenith. These, moreover,
are the successful gardeners.
- Richardson Wright, Truly Rural, 1922
If the garden of Eden really exits it does
so moment by moment, fragmented and tough,
cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or in a
heap
of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow.
- Helen Dumore, The Raw Garden
Life is a child playing around your feet,
a tool you hold firmly in your grip,
a bench you sit down upon in the evening, in your garden.
- Jean Anouilh
Affirmation of life is the spiritual act
by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins
to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value.
To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.
- Albert Schweitzer
Life is like an onion. You peel it off layer by layer and sometimes you cry.
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
The bud is on the bough again,
The leaf is on the tree.
- Charles Jefferys, 1807-1865, The Meeting of Spring
and Summer.
What a miserable thing life is:
you're living in clover,
only the clover isn't good enough.
- Bertolt Brecht
The best things in life aren't
things.
- Art Buchwald
What I have been preparing to say is
this, in wildness is the preservation of the
world ... Life consists of wildness. The most alive is the wildest.
Not yet subdued
by man, its presence refreshes him.... When I would re-create myself, I seek
the
darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal,
swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is
the strength,
the marrow, of Nature. In short, all good things are wild and free.
- Henry D. Thoreau, Walking, 1851
To live is so startling it leaves
little time for anything else.
- Emily Dickinson
Life eludes logic.
- Andre Gide
The healing power of being in a
garden is now being documented by medical studies.
These studies show that patients in hospitals who look out on a garden take less
medication and go home quicker than those who look out on a parking lot or
on other buildings. Alzheimer's patients are no longer violent when
placed in a garden.
- Judith Handelsman, Growing Myself, 1997
... we tend to forget that the body isn't
just a hat rack for the mind, but the crucible
of development and the creator, monitor, and synthesizer of all our experience.
- Winifred Gallagher, The Power of Place, 1993, p. 102
As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener.
We can never have enough of nature.
We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Nature is, above all, profligate.
Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves
return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the
first place?
- Annie Dillard
The force that through the green fuse
drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bend by the same wintry fever.
- Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953
It's said that when we die, the four elements
- earth, air, fire and water - dissolve one by one,
each into the other, and finally just dissolve into space. But while we're
living, we share
the energy that makes everything, from a blade of grass to an elephant, grow and
live and then inevitably wear out and die. This energy, this life force,
creates the whole world.
- Pema Chodron
Life is like a game of cards.
The hand that is dealt you represents determinism;
the way you play it is free will.
- Jawaharlal Nehru
In all things of nature there is
something marvelous.
- Aristotle
Man - despite his artistic
pretensions, his sophistication,
and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to
a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
- Author Unknown
Love-buds, put before you and within
you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms;
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
form, color, perfume, to you;
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers,
fruits, tall blanches and trees.
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Breathless, we flung us on a windy
hill, Laughed in the sun,
and kissed the lovely grass.
- Rupert Brooke
The hen is an egg's way of producing
another egg.
- Samuel Butler
It is amazing how many people want to
live a long life,
and yet so few want to grow old.
This document is scheduled for
further development in
March 2000.
Trees - Quotes for Gardeners (77K++)
Spirituality - Quotes for Gardeners (49K+)
Flowers - Quotes for Gardeners (75K+)
Simplicity - Quotes for Gardeners (34K+)
Beauty - Quotes for Gardeners (22K+)
Pulling Onions: Quips, Sayings, Epigrams about
Gardening (60K+)
The Essence of Gardening - Quotes for Gardeners (41K+)
Work - Quotes for Gardeners (48K+)
Garden Digest Links (86K+)
Haiku Poetry - Links and References (81K+)
Cliches - Quotes for Gardeners (32K+)
The History
of Gardening:
A Timeline from Ancient Times to the 20th Century (242K+)
Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo (110K+)
Seeing - Quotes for Gardeners (51K+)
Seasons - Quotes for Gardeners (37K+)
Weeds - Quotes for Gardeners (30K+)
Jokes and Humor - Quotes for Gardeners (48K+)
Religion - Quotes for Gardeners (47K+)
The Mental and Spiritual Aspects of
Gardening:
Bibliography and Resources
(62K+)
Quotes for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,000 Quotes Arranged by Over 60 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Distributed on the Internet by Green Way Research
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Ways to Communicate with Mike
Red Bluff, California
Life - Quotes for Gardeners, 17K, 9 January 2000, Version
2.11.