One does not begin to make a garden until he wants a garden. To want a garden is to be interested in plants, in the winds and rains, in birds and insects, in the warm-smelling earth.

Every decade needs its own manual of handicraft.

When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself.

The man who worries morning and night about the dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions.

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

The true purpose of education is to teach a man to carry himself triumphant to the sunset.

Give the children an opportunity to make garden. Let them grow what they will. It matters less that they grow good plants than that they try for themselves.

The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is.

There is no excellence without labor. One cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness.

Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion.

A person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it, then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion.

They were free to be what they wanted to be, and what they wanted to be was nothing.

We make our own luck. I believed that, too. We chose our own fate. We controlled our own future. I knew what I wanted. I needed to go get it.

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

All things flow nothing abides.

I eat, sleep, and drink my character. It is my fantasy to go to another planet.

I asked people who have already finished books for advice, which is akin to asking a mother with a four-year-old what childbirth is like.

I don't think balance is ever achieved in the full sense of the word.

Note to self: When noticing flyaway hairs, do not use lip gloss as an 'on-the-go' hair gel.

When you give your ONE Thing your most emphatic Yes! and vigorously say No! to the rest, extraordinary results become possible.

I'd love to be [one of MacGyver's buddies]. I'd watch that one and just think, wow, what a life. Living in Hawaii, driving around in someone's Ferrari, and solving mysteries.