Alfred Austin quotes

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. (Alfred Austin)
Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.
Alfred Austin
[E]xclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.
Alfred Austin
Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.
Alfred Austin
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here.
Alfred Austin
So, timely you came, and well you chose, You came when most needed, my winter rose. From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press Your leaves 'twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.
Alfred Austin
In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.
Alfred Austin
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.
Alfred Austin
Tears are summer showers to the soul.
Alfred Austin
No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.
Alfred Austin
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry. (Alfred Austin)
If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.
Alfred Austin
He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.
Alfred Austin
My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.
Alfred Austin
[...] faded smiles oft linger in the face, While grief's first flakes fall silent on the head!
Alfred Austin
[N]o verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess.
Alfred Austin
Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal.
Alfred Austin
Friendship, 'tis said, is love without his wings, And friendship, sir, is sweet enough for me.
Alfred Austin
Let your house Be spacious more than splendid, and be books And busts your most conspicuous furniture.
Alfred Austin
Imagination should A reconciler, not a rebel, be, To teach the heart of man to apprehend Nature's vicissitudes, and bear his own, With sympathetic fancy.
Alfred Austin
O'er the wires the electric message came, "He is no better; he is much the same." (Alfred Austin)
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
Alfred Austin
Your logic may be good, But dialectics never saved a soul.
Alfred Austin
Death is the looking-glass of life wherein Each man may scan the aspect of his deeds.
Alfred Austin
Know, Nature, like the cuckoo, laughs at law, Placing her eggs in whatso nest she will.
Alfred Austin