I have always felt that the best gardens aspired to coppice and that the best woods have all the elements of the very best gardens.
Monty DonRead
I have learnt that gardens are like happiness: you cannot pursue them as an absolute thing or moment.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happiness, like a garden, requires attention and cannot be merely chased as a goal.
In this quote, Monty Don suggests that happiness is not a destination that can be directly pursued or achieved. Instead, it's more akin to tending to a garden, where growth and fulfillment come from nurturing and appreciating the journey rather than fixating on a specific moment of joy.
Themes
HappinessGardenGrowthJourneyNurturing
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech on the value of life experiences, one could quote Monty Don to emphasize the importance of enjoying the process.
More from Monty Don
All quotes βI just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.
Monty DonRead
Sweet peas should smell. Half the point of growing sweet peas is to cut them for the house; they should fill a room with an almost painful olfactory inarticulateness. But most sweet peas smell of nothing. This does not stop them being beautiful, but they are like food with no flavour.
Monty DonRead
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
Monty DonRead
I use the period between Christmas and New Year to potter about, think and completely change my mindset. In that easy no-man's-land between Boxing Day and New Year, loins are girded and mettle readied. It is time, as we voyagers bid farewell to the old year, to fare forward.
Monty DonRead
I am always more interested in people than plants. Nature doesn't make gardens, people make gardens. And the story of a garden is always the story of a person.
Monty DonRead
Similar quotes
I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.
George Bernard ShawRead
It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now
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My whole effort is how to beautify this present moment, how to make people more celebrating, how to make people more joyous, how to give them a little glimpse of blissfulness, how to bring laughter to their life. Then the future takes care of itself. You need not think of the tomorrow, it comes. It comes out of this moment. Let this moment be of great celebration.
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A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery
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There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.
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Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year!
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