The seed of a blue lupin will usually produce a blue lupin. But the seed of a blue-eyed man may produce a brown-eyed bore...especially if his wife has a taste for gigolos.

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes.

...a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time...

I want to wear out,' he [Oldfield] said very softly. 'To wear out. Not to rust out.

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.

I had never 'taken a cutting' before ... Do you realize that the whole thing is miraculous? It is exactly as though you were to cut off your wife's leg, stick it in the lawn, and be greeted on the following day by an entirely new woman, sprung from the leg, advancing across the lawn to meet you.

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?