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The most beautiful of all gardens is assuredly not that which is rather forest or field than garden, the 'landscape garden' of false taste; nor, on the other hand, the shaven and trimmed and weeded parterre with an unstarred lawn; but rather the garden long ago strictly planned, rigidly ordered, architecturally piled, smooth and delicate, but later set free, given over to time and the sun; not a wilderness, but having an enclosed wilderness, a directed liberty, a designed magnificence and excess.

— Alice Meynell The Second Person Singular and Other Essays (1921)

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Gardening

More quotes by Alice Meynell

It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.

The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)

Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.

The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays (1893)

Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion.

What else, indeed, should mediocrity be but widespread, anywhere?

Childhood (1913)

Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos.

Children of the Old Masters (Italian School) (1903)

All Alice Meynell quotes →

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Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.

Alfred Austin The Garden That I Love (1894)

Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden.

Walter Scott

We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Eve

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alice Meynell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.