Garden Quotes

“In most gardens", the Tiger-lily said, "they make the beds too soft-so that the flowers are always asleep.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Turn that worthless lawn into a beautiful garden of food whose seeds are stories sown, whose foods are living origins. Grow a garden on the flat roof of your apartment building, raise bees on the roof of your garage, grow onions in the iris bed, plant fruit and nut trees that bear, don't plant 'ornamentals', and for God's sake don't complain about the ripe fruit staining your carpet and your driveway; rip out the carpet, trade food to someone who raises sheep for wool, learn to weave carpets that can be washed, tear out your driveway, plant the nine kinds of sacred berries of your ancestors, raise chickens and feed them from your garden, use your fruit in the grandest of ways, grow grapevines, make dolmas, wine, invite your fascist neighbors over to feast, get to know their ancestral grief that made them prefer a narrow mind, start gardening together, turn both your griefs into food; instead of converting them, convert their garage into a wine, root, honey, and cheese cellar--who knows, peace might break out, but if not you still have all that beautiful food to feed the rest and the sense of humor the Holy gave you to know you're not worthless because you can feed both the people and the Holy with your two little able fists.”
― Martin Prechtel, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive

“Summer was a lady who didn't give up her spotlight easily.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“This is my mind's garden, I tend it; I order it. I have nothing to fear.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“He stared up at the moon, which looked like a giant hole in the sky, letting light through to the other side.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“Fanfare for the Makers

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So fanfare for the Makers: who compose
A book of words or deeds who runs may write
As many who do run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light.
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids
One joke composed an island in the night.

As sometimes one man’s kindness pervades
A room or house or village, as sometimes
Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes
At midnight means to share them, as one man
In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span
The road can walk beneath the perfected arch,
The merest greenprint when the lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default
Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite
Of all assaults conscripts counter assault,

As mothers sit up late night after night
Moulding a life, as miners day by day
Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play
Their fish, as workers work and can take pride
In spending sweat before they draw their pay.

As horsemen fashion horses while they ride,
As climbers climb a peak because it is there,
As life can be confirmed even in suicide:

To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.

Louis Macneice”
― Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems

“Yes! If you really love your beautiful garden of dreams, you will never allow any hungry beast to have its way in. Keep dream killers away!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The soul of a child is the loveliest flower that grows in the garden of God.”
― Elizabeth George, A Mom After God's Own Heart: 10 Ways to Love Your Children

“Within my heart a garden grows,
wild with violets and fragrant rose.
Bright daffodils line the narrow path,
my footsteps silent as I pass.
Sweet tulips nod their heads in rest;
I kneel in prayer to seek God's best.
For round my garden a fence stands firm
to guard my heart so I can learn
who should enter, and who should wait
on the other side of my locked gate.
I clasp the key around my neck
and wonder if the time is yet.
If I unlocked the gate today, would you come in? Or run away?”
― Robin Jones Gunn, Christy Miller Collection, Vol. 4

“Somewhere on the world was the Emperor's palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, rainbowed with flowers.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The Daffodil-Yellow Villa

The new villa was enormous, a tall, square Venetian mansion, with faded daffodil-yellow walls, green shutters, and a fox-red roof. It stood on a hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by unkempt olive groves and silent orchards of lemon and orange trees.

... the little walled and sunken garden that ran along one side of the house, its wrought-iron gates scabby with rust, had roses, anemones and geraniums sprawling across the weed-grown paths ...

... there were fifteen acres of garden to explore, a vast new paradise sloping down to the shallow, tepid sea.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“Wander with intent
into a garden glorious.
Walk with double brisk
upon edenic paths.
Flee the cursing fear
that lights upon your eye.
Seize the twisted dream
that strangles earth and sky.”
― Craig Froman, An Owl on the Moon: A Journal From the Edge of Darkness

“...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“An ordinary visit to a beautiful garden always creates an extraordinary time!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“She abandoned the garden, and the mums and asters that had trusted her to see them through to the first frost hung their waterlogged heads.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“A garden did not need people in order to be alive and natural. The flowers might have died, and the last leaves might be falling, but the space was still redolent with the odors of life. It contained a thousand reassurances that no matter what one person’s strife, the seasons continued their cycle.”
― Madeline Hunter, Stealing Heaven

“We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.”
― John Cage, I–VI: MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacyInterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstancesVariableStructureNonunderstandingContingencyInconsistencyPerformance

“The battlefields of life were first meadows and gardens. We made them into battlefields, and by the same power, we must release the dark spell, so they are meadows and gardens once again.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“A man who destroys a beautiful garden by cutting all its trees is a real murderer and has not as much honour as an animal that treats well to the trees.”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Baada ya Adam na Hawa kutenda dhambi katika bustani ya Edeni, kila mtu anayezaliwa anazaliwa katika dhambi. Kwa hiyo dhambi hutokana na maisha, na maisha hutokana na dhambi.”
― Enock Maregesi

“There was always something sly about any act of education. Eve had learned that in the garden.”
― Paul Russell, The Coming Storm

“Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings--I haven't quite decided yet...”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden

“I heard a rapid alternation of notes,
a vibrating staccato of an ancient instrument,
nearly as old as nature herself,
a cricket singing
in my garden last night,
the first time this year.
When turning my garden's soil,
I often uncover crickets,
curmudgeons that scramble to find solitude
and cover from the light,
but I rarely hear their
ancient song 'till near
summer's end.

Although the wind is now lofting the branches
and rustling the leaves,
the evening sun
still warms my face.
And my garden still blooms full
with pink-papered hollyhocks
and blue, green spikes of lavender,
and roses,
bright pinks and yellows,
all glowing from sunshine-swelled canes,
and zinnias,
rainbow-shingled orbs,
and more.

And yet, I am already dreading
the coming of fall,
all dressed in small rags
of red, yellow, and orange.
I know that my summer garden
is nearing its end,
as hailed by the cricket's song.”
― Jeffrey A. White, A Blueness I Could Eat Forever

“True joy blossoms in the garden of inner peace.”
― Milan Ljubincic

“Das Geheimnis lag nicht in der Geschwindigkeit und der Kraft, sondern in der Liebe und der Sorgfalt”
― Katrin Tempel, Holunderliebe

“There is something divine, something artistic, and something supreme in reading a book in a peaceful garden.”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Qualquer jardim regado a dois é mais florido.”
― Fabiane Ribeiro, A gente ama, a gente sonha

“Working in garden is like digging knowledge from the earth.”
― Karthikeyan V

“It thanked her for the life she breathed into hits being; without her influence, this little being would not have been in the Garden of Glory.”
― H. L. Balcomb