Vita Sackville-West

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?”

“The more one gardens, the more one learns; and the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows.”

“Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life.”

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.”

“It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.”

“The country habit has me by the heart.”

“There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree.”

“Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens.”

“The great thing, as a poet, is to be spiritually promiscuous.”

“I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.”

“I worshipped you; I am cynical about you.”

“That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.”