My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
Interpretation
The quote expresses how nature can evoke deep feelings and provide a refuge from life's concerns.
In this quote, Alexander Smith compares his experience in his garden to the soothing effects of music. The garden, filled with silence and fragrance, creates an emotional sanctuary where the stresses of life are kept at bay, allowing for peaceful reflection and appreciation of beauty.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the therapeutic benefits of nature.
Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.
What I love most about nature is how indifferent it is to us humans and human suffering. While we are here with our little or big tragedies - the wind is blowing, the leaves are rustling in the trees, the flowers bloom, and die - there's a great comfort in that indifference.
Eating is an environmental act.
Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in a lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.
We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy Earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it.
I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!
In Isleta the rainbow was a crack in the universe. We saw the barest of all life that is possible. Bright horses rolled over and over the dusking sky.
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