Everyone loves to quote. It's very thought provoking. A few words are so powerful.
(read this page in Danish, here)
"The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heven."...Mark Twain
"We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things."...Mark Twain
"Every breath is a giveaway dance between you and the plants."...Susun Weed
"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves."...Mahatma Gandhi
"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change."...Buddha
"You cannot solve a problem at the level which originated it."...Einstein
"Wherever you go, there you are."...variously attibuted to Confucius, Buddha, and Buckaroo Banzai
"Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall"..."Desert Rose" ... Sting
"The unmulched garden looks to me like some naked thing which for one reason or another would be better off with a few clothes on."...Ruth Stout, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, 1971
"I love being asked to identify plants, and I don't know which gives me more pleasure: to know what they are or not to know what they are."...Elizabeth Lawrence, Through the Garden Gates, 1990
"The best is yet to be."...Robert Browning
"The only two herbicides we recommend are cultivation and mulching."...Organic Gardening Magazine
"A flower is an educated weed."...Luther Burbank
"More grows in the garden than the gardener sows."...Old Spanish Proverb
"It seemed to my friend that the creation of a landscape-garden offered to the proper muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here indeed was the fairest field for the display of the imagination, in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty."...Poe
"And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden...You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden."...Rudyard Kipling
"With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy."...Lope de Vega
"How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening."...Alexander Smith
"What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our starts the flowers of the heaven."...A.J. Balfour
"Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting." ...Wordsworth
"With landscaping, you never seem to reach a point when you feel the job is complete."...author unknown
"Out of gardens grow fleeting flowers but lasting friendships."...Beverly Rose Hopper
"Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green."...Henry David Thoreau
"Never yet was a springtime, when the buds forgot to bloom."...Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
"To see a world
in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wildflower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."...William Blake
"A well planned garden
bathed in rain and sun.
A faithful laborer...
and the harvest shall come."...Nancy Simms Taylor
"He plants to benefit another generation."...Caccilius Stativs
"Not every soil can bear all things."...Virgil
"Growth is the only evidence of life."...John Henry Cardinal Newman 1864
"Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone."...Thomas Moore
"Who loves a garden still
his Eden keeps,
Perennial pleasures plants,
and wholesome harvest reaps."...Amos Bronson Alcott 1868
"To everything there is a season...a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted."...Ecclesiastes 3
"The poetry of the earth is never dead."...John Keats
"If man cheats the earth, the earth will cheat man."...Chinese
"Everything is good in its season."...Italian
"Rain in the spring is as precious as oil."...Chinese
"When God blesses the harvest, there is enough for the thief as well as the gardener."...Polish
"Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade."...Rudyard Kipling
"I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion."...Emile Zola
"Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste."...William Shakespeare
"Now 'tis spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now and they'll o'ergrow the garden."...William Shakespeare, Henry IV
"The only two herbicides we recommend are cultivation and mulching."...Organic Gardening Magazine
"Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world."...Virgil A. Kraft
"With understanding, those we love will certainly flower."...Thich Nhat Hanh
"May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers."...Thich Nhat Hanh
"As the gardener, such is the garden."...Hebrew proverb
"Go out by yourself, face the wind, hold up your head and thank God for this gardening year."...Richardson Wright
"You know you are a hard-core gardener if you deadhead flowers in other people's garden."...Sue Careless
"Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done. Whether you like it or not."...Charles Kingsley
"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful: they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul."...Luther Burbank
"A gardener learns more in the mistakes than in the successes."...Barbara Borland
"No winter lasts forever. No spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep. And we know it."...Hal Borland
"The garden that is finished is dead."
"The wise gardener anticipates June in January."
"Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."
"Watering is like telling our spouse, "I love you." the more you do it, the better the result."
"To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do."...Charles Dudley Warner, author, editor, publisher (1829 - 1900)
"All nature wears one universal grin."...Henry Fielding
"All nature seems at work."...Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come."...Chinese proverb
"All that in this delightful garden grows,
Should happy be, and have immortal bliss."...Edmond Spencer
"All art is but imitation of nature."...Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher."...William Wordsworth
"A garden is a lovesome thing!"...Thomas Edward Brown
"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."...Zeno
"Let us give nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do."...Michael Eyquen de Montaigne
"Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too."...William Cooper
"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival."...Wendell Berry
"The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."...Johann VonGoethe
"A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart."...Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons (1964)
"Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next, and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all."...Katherine Whitehorn, Observations (1970)
"Each garden has its own surprise."...Susan Allen Toth, My Love Affair with England (1992)
"There's little risk in becoming overly proud of one's garden because gardening by its very nature is humbling. It has a way of keeping you on your knees."...Joanne R. Barwick, in Readers Digest (1993)
"True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root."...Mary Sarton, As Does New Hampshire (1967)
"A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself."...Mary Sarton, At Seventy (1984)
"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life."...Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted (1933)
"And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens take his pleasure."...John Milton, Il Penseroso
"If the grass on the other side of the fence appears greener...it must be all the fertilizer they are using."...Kevin Rodowicz
"Over fertilized plants may be beautiful but are otherwise useless, like people whose energies are devoted so completely to their appearance that there is no other development."...William Longgood
"Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay."...George Meredith
"I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree."...Joyce Kilmer, "Trees"
"There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords."...John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)
"A friend in the garden is a treasure whose worth cannot be measured except by the heart."...Anon
"Come and visit me sometime. My flowers would like to meet you."
"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."...Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)
"Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can't hate the manure and blame he roots for not being blossoms."...Buckminster Fuller
"A fool looks for dung where the cow never browsed."...Proverb from Ethiopia
"Sometimes you have to step in it to learn how to avoid it."...Anon
"Rosemary only grows where the mistress is master."
"Plant the seeds of friendship, then watch the blessings grow!"
"Anyone can have dirt. Gardener's have soil."
"Gardening is an exercise in optimism."
"If you are a gardener, you can always put 'Plant Manager' on your resume."
"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?"...Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
"You may go down to the garden."...(Peter Rabbit's mother) Beatrix Potter
"You may go into the field or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden."...(Peter Rabbit's mother) Beatrix Potter
"And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with daffodils."...William Wordsworth
"My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws."...Claude Monet
"Once we become interested in the progress of the plants in our care, their development becomes a part of the rhythm of our own lives and we are refreshed by it."...Thalassa Cruso
"Every garden is a chore sometimes, but no real garden is nothing but a chore."...Nancy Grasby
"Gardens cannot be considered in detachment from the people who made them."...Derek Clifford
"The best thing that can come out of a garden are gifts for other people."...Jamie Jobb
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."...William Wordsworth
"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
"Plants teach us about the human condition, what it means to be fully human. Pets do the same thing."...Judith Handelsman
"You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature."...William Rotsier
"The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose."...Heda Bejar
"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket."...Arabian Proverb
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."...John Keats
"You don't have to garden just for yourself. You have to share it."...Augusta Carter
"Do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."...Benjamin Franklin
"I live in the garden; I just sleep in the house."...Jim Long
"More in a garden grows than what the gardener sows."...Spanish Proverb
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit."...Aristotle
"Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand."...Mother Teresa
"Like people, plants respond to extra attention."...H. Peter Loewer
"Flowers are love's truest language."...Park Benjamin
"Gardening has a magical quality when you are a child."...Barbara Damrosch
"There is a garden in every childhood, and enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again."...Elizabeth Lawrence
"Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do."...Slim Acres
"Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration."...Lou Erictson
"An artist is not paid for his labor, but for his vision."...James McNeil Whistler
"Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of the season."...Kahlil Gibran
"It is at the edge of a petal that love awaits."...William Carlos Williams
"The rose speaks silently of love, in a language known only to the heart."...Unknown
"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."...Victor Hugo
"Flowers are words which even a baby can understand."...Arthur C. Coxe
"Kind hearts are the garden,
kind thoughts are the roots,
kind words are the blossoms,
kind deeds are the fruit."...John Ruskin
"Friendship is a sheltering tree."...Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Plant a seed of friendship; reap a bouquet of happiness."...Lois L. Kaufman
"The only rose without thorns is friendship."...Unknown
"The earth is as wonderful as we are willing to make it. It's about choices." ...Celia (friend of Emily)
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ...Margaret Mead
"But each spring...a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground."...Lewis Gantt
"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."...Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg (1986)
"Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow."
"The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world."...Vita Sackville-West
"When gardening I have one gift,
you won't find in manuals.
I know it's strange,
but I can change,
perennials into annuals."...anonymous
"I'm not aging, I just need repotting."...anonymous
"How miraculous that growing on my own little plot of land are plants that can turn the dead soil into a hundred flavours as different as horseradish and thyme, smells ranging from stinkhorn to lavender."...John Seymour, b 1914 (English naturalist)
"The best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner."...Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American President
"Gardening is not a rational act."...Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg (1986)
"Flowers are my music."...Sir Thomas Arnold, d, 1842
"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment."...Georgia O'Keefe, New York Post (1946)
"I want death to find me planting my cabbages."...Montaigne, Essays Book I (1880)
"I was determined to know beans."...Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
"I've always thought my flowers had souls."...Myrtle Reed, Lavender and Old Lace (1902)
"Happiness held is a seed. Happiness shared is the flower."...anonymous
"What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it."...Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden (1871)
"Growing in the fast lane."...unknown
"From the ground up."...unknown
"If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk;
happy for a long time, fall in love;
happy forever, take up gardening."...British comedian and playwright Arthur Smith
"There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."...Dave Barry
"If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water."...Loren Eiseley
"It takes a long time to grow old friends."...anonymous
"We all share the same backyard."...Emily
"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God."...Thomas Jefferson
"If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity".....Robert Fulgham.
"Hope for the future is at the heart of all gardening."
"You know you are a real gardener when you think compost is a fascinating subject."
"Plants that are about to be removed have a habit of suddenly doing better."
"Nature soon takes over if the gardener is absent."
*These from the Daylily Book (1972)
"Gardening is a mirror of the heart."
"How lovely is the silence of growing things."
"He who owns a wood of proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the personal riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke pears, deserves to lose the respect of all sensible men."
...A.J. Downing "Fruits & Fruit Trees of America" 1845
"A weed is only a misplaced plant."
"Cultivate the garden within."
"He who plants a tree loves others besides himself."
"As Rosemary is to the spirit, so Lavender is to the soul."
"As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener."
"One who plants a garden, plants happiness."...Chinese proverb
"My garden will never make me famous, I'm a horticultural ignoramus."...Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
"All gardeners know better than other gardeners."...Chinese proverb
"To get the best results you must talk to your vegetables."...Prince Charles (b 1948)
"We have not inherited the earth from our parents; we have borrowed it from our children."...L. Brown, 1981
"Time began in a garden."
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves"
"He who plants a tree, plants a hope."
"Fertility of the soil is the future of civilization."...Sir Albert Howard (19th century agriculturist)
"Keep it small, keep it varied."...Bill Mullison's "Golden Rule" of garden design
"Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another."...Edumond Burke
"I garden, therefore I am."
"If you would have a mind at peace, a heart that cannot harden, go find a door that opens wide upon a lovely garden."
"Don't grumble that roses have thorns, be thankful that thorns have roses."...Alphonse Karr (A Tour Round My Garden)
"Tickle the earth with a hoe, it will laugh a harvest."
"Always remember the beauty of the garden, for there is peace."
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig"...Robert Heinlein
"You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt."
"In the garden, my soul is sunshine."
"We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden."
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."...Marcel Proust
"So many seeds - so little time."
"An addiction to gardening is not all bad when you consider all the other choices in life."
"Where but in a garden do summer hours pass so quickly?"
"The thing generally raised on city land is taxes."...Charles Dudley Werner, "My Summer in a Garden" (1870)
"If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden"...Chinese Proverb
"Show me your garden and I shall tell you who you are."...Alfred Austin (1857-1929)
"In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends."...Kozuko Okakura
"Hope never dies within a true gardener's heart"...anonymous
"Though an old man, I am but a young gardener."...Thomas Jefferson
"What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place."...Donald Culross Peattie
"When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden."...Minnie Aumonier
"The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession."...Phyllis McGinley
"All gardeners know better than other gardeners."...Chinese Proverb
"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."...Henry David Thoreau
"And puck 'til time
and times are done,
The silver apples of the moor,
The golden apples of the sun."...William Butler Yeates
"Nothing is more the child of art than a garden."...Sir Walter Scott
"Carpe rutila" (Seize the spade)
...David Hobson on his garden site http://home.golden.net/~dhobson
"Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul."...The Koran
"A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul."...Sadi
"Kiss of the sun for pardon.
Song of the birds for mirth.
You're closer to God's heart in a garden
Than any place else on earth."...Dorothy Frances Gurney
"Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us."...Wolfgang von Geothe
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."...Francis Bacon
"The greatest service which can be rendered [any country] is to add a useful plant to its culture."...Thomas Jefferson
"No one can garden alone."...Elizabeth Lawrence
"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."...Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Allow yourself to become what has so graciously been given to you."...(a trappist monk)
"Nothing is worth more than this day."...Mary Engelbreit
"Bloom where you are planted."...Mary Engelbreit
"What is paradise, but, a garden, an orchard of trees and herbs, full of pleasure and nothing there but delights."...William Lawson from the book "The Country Housewife's Garden" (1617) This was the first garden book written expressly for women.
"I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden."...John Erskine
"What is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."...Ralph Waldo Emerson 1878
"Gardening is the purest of human pleasures."...Francis Bacon
"I thank you for the seeds...Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity."...Thomas Jefferson, 1822
"Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than Emperor's."...Mary Cantwell
"Friends are flowers in the garden of life" .... anon.
"The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world"
...Vita Sackville-West
"Earth laughs in flower" .. Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments."
..Janet Kilburn Phillips
"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous"...Aristotle
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.."
...William Shakespeare
"Whoever makes a garden
Has, oh so many friends!
The glory of the morning,
The dew when daylight ends.
...Douglas Malloch
The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
...Ecouchard Le Brun
Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the flowers,
Kind deeds are the fruits,
Take care of your garden
And keep out the weeds,
Fill it with sunshine
Kind words and kind deeds.
...Longfellow
"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies."
...Gertrude Jekyll
"A garden is a friend you can visit any time."
"Cares melt when you kneel in your garden."
"To boldly grow where no one has groan before."
...David Hobson on his garden site http://home.golden.net/~dhobson