“The ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight.”

Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them.

Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

Life in the country teaches one that the really stimulating things are the quiet, natural things, and the really wearisome things are the noisy, unnatural things. It is more exciting to stand still than to dance. Silence is more eloquent than speech.

Water is more stimulating than wine. Fresh air is more intoxicating than cigarette smoke. Sunlight is more subtle than electric light.

A gardener is never shut out from his garden, wherever he may be. Its comfort never fails. Though the city may close about him, and the grime and soot descend upon him, he can still wander in his garden, does he but close his eyes.

As any psychologist will tell you, the worst thing you can possibly do to a woman is to deprive her of a grievance.

To dig one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all.

Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance.

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue.

Every moment of this strange and lovely life from dawn to dusk, is a miracle. Somewhere, always a rose is opening its petals to the dawn. Somewhere, always, a flower is fading in the dusk.

We both know, you and I, that if all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace.

There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages.

Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

ONLY IN MY DREAMS is pure Eve Byron, which means it’s a pure delight. I fell in love with Lorelei and Dane, two of the most delightful characters I’ve encountered in a very long time.

We all need to learn a new language for love – a language that speaks not in socks, pancakes, and paychecks, but in shared fascination with physics or poetry, delight in each other’s uniqueness, and mutual practical and emotional support.

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

The children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on.

Sensual is everything that refers to the delight of the senses. And that’s what artists do, is stimulate the senses in any possible way.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him.