“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.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

I’m delighted about the track’s success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is,

It’s Satan’s delight to tell me that once he’s got me, he will keep me. But at that moment I can go back to God.

I am delighted at Des’s support in these elections. And thank him for his rewrite of the lyrics of Send in the Clowns which we are planning to sing at our South East conference.

All I can say is if the part doesn’t delight me in some way, or I can’t feel any compassion for it, I just can’t do it.

To be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren’s hands.