Quotes about garden
page 6

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme photo

“It is my hope, and my brother’s hope… to build houses in which our work-people will be able to live and see comfortable. Semi-detached houses, with gardens back and front, in which they will be able to know more about the science of life than they can in a back slum, and in which they will learn that there is more enjoyment in life than a mere going to and returning from work, and looking forward to Saturday night to draw their wages.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

Messrs. Lever’s New Soap Works, Port Sunlight, Cheshire. Full Reports of the Ceremony of Cutting the First Sod, and Proceedings at the Inaugural Banquet, 1888, pp.28-29; Cited in: Viscount William Hulme Lever Leverhulme, ‎William Hulme Lever Leverhulme (2d viscount) (1927). Viscount Leverhulme, p. 49

Enoch Powell photo
Anne Rice photo
Tim Bray photo

“The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.”

Tim Bray (1955) Canadian software developer

New Android teammate: iPhone a "Disney-fied walled garden" http://electronista.com/articles/10/03/15/web.pioneer.joins.google.to.prove.apple.wrong in Electronista (15 March 2010)

Joseph Strutt photo
Kunti photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Glory of the Garden http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/english_history/glorygarden.html, Stanza 8.
Other works

Georgia O'Keeffe photo
George Moore (novelist) photo

“The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it… you and you alone make me feel that I am alive… Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Letter to Lady Emerald Cunard, quoted in The Everything Wedding Vows Book : Anything and Everything You Could Possibly Say at the Altar, and then Some. (2001) by Janet Anastasio and Michelle Bevilacqua, p. 97.

Matthew Good photo
Willem Maris photo

“As far as I can remember, it was about 25 or 26 years ago that Breitner [his pupil then] painted with me in 'Huize Rozenburg' [The Hague]... There I had a large garden where he painted his dragoons with horses, posing there in front of him..”

Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)

version in original Dutch / citaat van Willem Maris, in het Nederlands: Voor zover ik me kan herinneren is het zoowat 5 of 26 jaar geleden, dat Breitner [zijn leerling toen] bij mij schilderde in den Huize Rozenburg.. .Ik had daar een grote tuin en daar schilderde hij zijn dragonders met paarden, die hij daar liet poseren..
Source: a letter of Willem Maris to Plasschaert 5 Jan. 1906, RKD Den Haag (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)

Robin Williams photo
George Meredith photo

“More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
Utterly this fair garden we might win.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

St. 48.
Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

Robert Charles Wilson photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
Anish Kapoor photo
Bill Mollison photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Sensitive Plant http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=shelley2003060601 (1820), Pt. I, st. 1

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
André Maurois photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Edward German photo

“When Adam and Eve were dispossessed / Of the garden hard by Heaven / They planted another one down in the West / Twas Devon, glorious Devon”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

Lyrics from the song "Glorious Devon", incorrectly attributed to German in a contest sponsored by the Devon County Council. Though German did write the music, the lyrics were written by Sir Harold Boulton.
Misattributed

Kent Hovind photo
Nadezhda Durova photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

Giorgio de Chirico photo

“The structure of cities, the architecture of houses, squares, gardens, public walks, gateways, railway stations, etc – all these provide us with the basic principles of a great Metaphysical aesthetic... We, who live under the sign of the Metaphysical alphabet, we know the joy and sorrows to be found in a gateway, a street corner, a room, on the surface of a table, between the sides of a box…”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
De Chirico's statement on Metaphysical aesthetic in painting motifs like houses, architecture, railway stations
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Muhammad photo

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The poor will enter the Garden [heaven] five hundred years before the rich."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 487
Sunni Hadith

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Alfred Austin photo

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: As quoted in Growing with the Seasons (2008) by Frank & Vicky Giannangelo, p. 115., and one or two other gardening books, as well as on various internet gardening sites and lists of quotations. However, it is sometimes attributed to Voltaire, and about one-third of the time it is quoted without attribution (at times even without quotation marks). It is not to be found in Austin's The Garden That I Love or any of its five sequels.

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“Whenever I go to a botanical garden, I think of killing people with a spade.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

Kate Bush photo

“I hid my yo-yo
In the garden.
I can't hide you
From the government.
Oh, God, Daddy —
I won't forget…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985)

Jordan Peterson photo
Angela Merkel photo

“The state has to assist and must not constrict. In this spirit it has to be the gardener and not the fence. We should be confident that the people want to get [socially] involved and want to assume responsibility.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Der Staat muss fördern und darf nicht einschränken. In diesem Sinne muss er Gärtner sein und nicht Zaun. Wir sollten den Menschen zutrauen, dass sie sich engagieren und Verantwortung übernehmen wollen.
Interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (sueddeutsche.de) on May 20, 2006
2006

Bill Mollison photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“They are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life…It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who…promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Cheers.
Speech at Blackheath (28 October 1871), quoted in The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
1870s

Giorgio de Chirico photo

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Iggy Pop photo

“I almost always pee in the yard or the garden, because I like to pee on my estate.”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

Rolling Stone interview (2003)

John Milton photo

“And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 49

Henry Ward Beecher photo
Emily Brontë photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Camille Paglia photo

“The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

William Cowper photo

“Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 566.

Camille Paglia photo
Homér photo

“He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.”

VIII. 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore); the death of Gorgythion.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain, —
So sinks the youth; his beauteous head, depressed
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Ned Ward photo

“He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden.”

Ned Ward (1667–1731) English writer

Source: London Terraefilius, No. 3, p. 29, (1707).

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Jim Rogers photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Amanda Filipacchi photo
Báb photo
Muhammad photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
John Muir photo
Théodore Guérin photo
Henry Moore photo
The Mother photo
William Morris photo
Aurangzeb photo

“27 January 1670: During this month of Ramzan abounding in miracles, the Emperor as the promoter of justice and overthrower of mischief, as a knower of truth and destroyer of oppression, as the zephyr of the garden of victory and the reviver of the faith of the Prophet, issued orders for the demolition of the temple situated in Mathura, famous as the Dehra of Kesho Rai. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers, the destruction of this strong foundation of infidelity was accomplished, and on its site a lofty mosque was built at the expenditure of a large sum. This temple of folly was built by that gross idiot Birsingh Deo Bundela. Before his accession to the throne, the Emperor Jahangir was displeased with Shaikh Abul Fazl. This infidel [Birsingh] became a royal favourite by slaying him [Abul Fazl], and after Jahangir’s accession was rewarded for this service with the permission to build the temple, which he did at an expense of thirty-three lakhs of rupees.
Praised be the august God of the faith of Islam, that in the auspicious reign of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence [Aurangzeb], such a wonderful and seemingly impossible work was successfully accomplished. On seeing this instance of the strength of the Emperor’s faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the proud Rajas were stifled, and in amazement they stood like facing the wall. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra, and buried under the steps of the mosque of the Begam Sahib, in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad.
17 December 1679: Hafiz Muhammad Amin Khan reported that some of his servants had ascended the hill and found the other side of the pass also deserted; (evidently) the Rana had evacuated Udaipur and fled. On the 4th January/12th Zil. H., the Emperor encamped in the pass. Hasan ‘Ali Khan was sent in pursuit of the infidel. Prince Muhammad ‘Azam and Khan Jahan Bahadur were permitted to view Udaipur. Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana’s palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers. Twenty machator Rajputs [who] were sitting in the temple, vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Saqi Mustad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, translated and annotated by Jadunath Sarkar, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1947, reprinted by Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, Delhi, 1986. quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: January, 1670. “In this month of Ramzan, the religious-minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura known as the Dehra of Keshav Rai. His officers accomplished it in a short time. A grand mosque was built on its site at a vast expenditure. The temple had been built by Bir Singh Dev Bundela, at a cost of 33 lakhs of Rupees. Praised be the God of the great faith of Islam that in the auspicious reign- of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence, such a marvellous and [seemingly] impossible feat was accomplished. On seeing this [instance of the] strength of the Emperor’s faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the Rajahs felt suffocated and they stood in amazement like statues facing the walls. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the mosque of Jahanara, to be trodden upon continually.”
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Albert Marquet photo

“I painted only [in pure colours] at Arcueil and at the Luxembourg Gardens.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

As quoted by J. P. Crespelle, The Fauves, Oldbourne Press, London 1962, p. 66
one of the paintings which Marquet painted in 1898 at the Luxembourg Gardens was titled simply 'Le Luxembourg', see: Francois Fosca, Albert Marquet (Paris: Editions Nouvelle Revue Francois, 1922), pl, 16.

William Beckford photo

“I fear I shall never be…good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.”

William Beckford (1760–1844) English novelist

Letter to Catherine, Lady Hamilton, April 1781; cited from Lewis Melville The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill (London: William Heinemann, 1910) p. 92.

James Thomas Fields photo

“The skipper stormed and tore his hair,
Hauled on his boots and roared at Marden—
"Nantucket's sunk and here we are
Right over old Marm Hackett’s garden!"”

James Thomas Fields (1817–1881) American writer and publisher

The Nantucket Skipper, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Rumi photo
Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“Although we must leave you,
Fair Castle of Mey,
We shall never forget,
Nor will never repay,
A meal of such splendour,
Repast of such zest,
It will take us to Sunday,
Just to digest.
To leafy Balmoral,
We are now on our way,
But our hearts will remain
At the Castle of Mey.
With your gardens and ranges,
And all your good cheer,
We will be back again soon
So roll on next year.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

Ode to the Castle of Mey, recorded in the visitors' book at the Castle of Mey, in Caithness, during a visit to the Queen Mother, 1993. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3049709.stm

Emily Dickinson photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Abraham Cowley photo

“God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

The Garden, ii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Muir photo

“The very thought of this Alaska garden is a joyful exhilaration. … Out of all the cold darkness and glacial crushing and grinding comes this warm, abounding beauty and life to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation finer and finer.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 16: Glacier Bay
1910s

Taj El-Din Hilaly photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“.. As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new kingdom (of Armenia) - from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia - the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods and chattels in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new grant Sultan. the new 'city of Tigranes", Tigranocerta, situated in in the most southern province of Armenia, not far from the Mesopotamian frontier, was a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of palace, garden and park that were appropriate to sultanism In other respects, too, the new great king proved faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the East the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed himself in public, appeared in the state and costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple fagtan, the half white half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem - attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever he went or stoood, by four "kings."”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Chapter 2 Pg. 47 - "Rule of the Sullan Restoration" Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“A single grave! —the only one
In this unbroken ground,
Where yet the garden leaf and flower
Are lingering around.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Single Grave from The London Literary Gazette (29th August 1829)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Bk. VII, Ch. 5
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

Joseph Strutt photo
Clement Attlee photo

“A Tory minister can sleep in ten different women's beds in a week. A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour's wife over the garden fence.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Harold Wilson, Memoirs 1916-1964: The Making of a Prime Minister (Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, London, 1986), p. 121.
Attributed

Luis Barragán photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
John Muir photo
Warren Farrell photo
Orson Welles photo
John Muir photo
Henry Morton Stanley photo

“Religion acts as a moral gardener, to weed out, or suppress, evil tendencies, which, like weeds: grow.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Quotes:, Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1909)

T. E. Lawrence photo

“The sword was odd. The Arab Movement was one: Feisal another (his name means a flashing sword): then there is the excluded notion, Garden of Eden touch: and the division meaning, like the sword in the bed of mixed sleeping, from the Morte d'Arthur. I don't know which was in your mind, but they all came to me — and the sword also means clean-ness, and death.”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

Letter to Eric Kennington (27 October 1922); "The sword also means clean-ness and death" also appears on the cover of the first edition of Robert Mikey Thicklehorn's Words of Wisdom. (1922)

Otto Neurath photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Lyndon LaRouche photo

“[The Leesburg Garden Club is a] nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

Quoted in Chicago Tribune (2 December 1988) "Ex-Aide: LaRouche Extravagant" p. 13.
Attributed

J. M. Barrie photo

“Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city, you get strawberries.”

Ron Finley American fashion designer and urban gardener

Ron Finley at TED2013 (2013)

Gene Wolfe photo
Jeremy Collier photo

“This is brave Bear-Garden language!”

Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian

See John Ray for explanation of Bear Garden.
Source: A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, p 232. (1698)