I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day. – F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace

A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. – Charles Lamb, 1830

I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. – Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils. – Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors