Alfred Austin
50 quotes
Biography
"And Clara dies that Claribel may dance."
"Who loves his country never forfeits heaven."
"Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry."
"Love and naughtiness are always in their teens."
"Who once has doubted never quite believes."
"Who once believed will never wholly doubt."
"Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves."
"[T]here is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to admit that you were mistaken. Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder."
"Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble."
"No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it."
"A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences, and character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten, but withal manifest autobiography. Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like."
"[E]xclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society."
"[H]e who saves an ancient tree does better even than he who plants a new one."
"Whatever else he may do, a critic reveals and criticises himself."
"If you are not something of a philosopher,—and by philosophy I understand a serene temper, and the maintaining of an equable mind under the sharpest disappointments,—I do not advise you to cultivate, or at any rate to grow enamoured of, a garden."
"A writer cannot take his occupation too seriously. He cannot take himself too lightly."
"[A]mbition should be spoken of as not the last, but the first infirmity of noble minds, of which they gradually purge themselves as they grow more mature."
"One must be intoxicated by scenery, in order to appreciate it. Tranquil survey is not enough, and scrutinising curiosity is fatal."
"Men preach Philosophy, women practise it."
"It is always delightful to have one's feelings expressed by some one else in language of enthusiasm one might oneself be afraid to employ."
"[P]eople who canalise their lives and prearrange their enjoyments lose much of the enchantment which attends the guiding beneficence of chance."
"All imitation is exaggeration."
"[T]he charm of a half-neglected old garden arises from its having, once upon a time, not been neglected."
"To homes pervaded by charm, as to works of Art that approach perfection, the more happily constituted minds say 'Yes' without any qualification. The proper homage due to them is absolute assent."
"A person of the right sort is one who has a solid grasp and realistic apprehension of people and things as they are, an irresistible inclination to transfigure them according to his imagination, and an inexhaustible supply of philosophic humour."