Henry Mitchell Quotes

• All anybody needs to know about prizes is that Mozart never won one.

  Henry Mitchell

  Achievement, Needs, Ignorance Is Bliss

  46 Copy quote

• Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise.

  Henry Mitchell

  Confused, Garden, Religion

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.1, Indiana University Press

  21 Copy quote

• Your garden will reveal yourself.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Religion, Spirit

  15 Copy quote

• By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months. All is at last in balance and all is serene. The gardener is usually dead, of course.

  Henry Mitchell

  War, Flower, Garden

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.25, Indiana University Press

  15 Copy quote

• Now the gardener is the one who has seen everything ruined so many times that (even as his pain increases with each loss) he comprehends - truly knows - that where there was a garden once, it can be again, or where there never was, there yet can be a garden.

  Henry Mitchell

  Death, Pain, Loss

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.3, Indiana University Press

  11 Copy quote

• Gardening is full of mistakes, almost all of them pleasant and some of them actually instructive.

  Henry Mitchell

  Mistake, Gardening, Pleasant

  Henry Mitchell (1999). “One Man's Garden”, p.34, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.

  Henry Mitchell

  Beautiful, Spring, Heart

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.17, Indiana University Press

  22 Copy quote

• Gardening is a long road, with many detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another. It's not a question of superior or inferior taste, merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important; the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point.

  Henry Mitchell

  Journey, Hiking, Long

  Henry Mitchell (2014). “Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a 'natural way'. You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.

  Henry Mitchell

  Nature, Pride, Garden

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.3, Indiana University Press

  10 Copy quote

• A garden is not a picture, but a language.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Language

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.72, Indiana University Press

  6 Copy quote

• Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.

  Henry Mitchell

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.41, Indiana University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad.

  Henry Mitchell

  Animal, Garden, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late.

  Henry Mitchell

  Spring, Too Late, Hot Days

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.17, Indiana University Press

  11 Copy quote

• Turn down the noise. Reduce the speed. Be like the somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow down
  and almost die in the cold season. Let it be the way it is. The magic is there in its power.

  Henry Mitchell

  Winter, Animal, Magic

  Henry Mitchell (1999). “One Man's Garden”, p.247, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• Nature does not hesitate to interfere with me. So I do not hesitate to tamper with it.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Doe, Interfere

  Henry Mitchell (1999). “One Man's Garden”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• Wherever humans garden magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks.

  Henry Mitchell

  Death, Garden, Dying

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.2, Indiana University Press

  4 Copy quote

• The mere fact that you get a lot of seeds in a packet doesn't mean you have to plant all of them.

  Henry Mitchell

  Mean, Cutting, Facts

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.94, Indiana University Press

  4 Copy quote

• All who see it say, "Well, you have favorable conditions here. Everything grows for you." Everything grows for everybody. Everything dies for everybody, too.

  Henry Mitchell

  Wells, Grows, Dies

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.3, Indiana University Press

  4 Copy quote

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