China Garden Quotes & Sayings

Before you can become a master of anything, you must first learn that you'll always be a student. — Myself

When I lived in China, there were no libraries. My mother bought books for me, and they were mostly the classics. I read 'Peter Pan,' 'The Secret Garden,' the 'Rosemary' books, and Kipling's 'Just So' Stories was one of my favorites. No, I didn't read historical fiction. It didn't exist where I was growing up in China. — Jean Fritz

Some car had hit it after all, because it hadn't had the courage to honor its own correct instinct. And I began to cry because I had this thought about people, that they do this all the time, deny the wise voice inside them telling them the right thing to do because it is different. I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline around it a beautiful bonus. They didn't consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw. — Elizabeth Berg

I think that places, like people, ought to have boundaries. Who ever said that gardening was a public activity, anyway? Gardening, like making love, feels a lot better than it looks. Nobody buys tickets to gardening competitions. There's no such thing as the Gardening Olympics. There is no gold medal in Speed Weeding or Double Digging. Maybe there should be, but I wouldn't compete in a gardening Olympiad for all the compost in China. I go through ungainly contortions when I garden. I squat. I crawl around on my hands and knees. Most of the time I bend over, upended. That angle may be flattering to a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, but it is not flattering to me. — Cassandra Danz

No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy. — Thomas Carlyle

It is inspiriting without doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas. His mind creates distance; the motor-car stupidly destroys it ... — G.K. Chesterton

My parents used to play music when we had gone to bed, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. Often it was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep. Every now and again he played records when he was alone in his study. Steinar had told me once that he had brought a Pink Floyd LP into the classroom and played it. He had said this with awe in his voice. — Karl Ove Knausgard

The indoor picnic had been laid out in an octagonal-shaped sunroom featuring an atrium set in the center of the stone floor. Here a "white garden" planted with white roses, snowy lilies, and silver magnolias gave off a delicious scent that drifted across the table laden with linen, crystal, and silver. The white linen cloth had been scattered with pink rose petals that matched the flowered Sevres china. — Lisa Kleypas

A door behind the desk opened, and a short, wiry man entered. His short-sleeved dress shirt was shiny and unbuttoned down to the navel, revealing a host of gold chains and, uh, bling. His arms were knotted, ropy muscle. Have you ever seen someone who gave you the chills just by entering a room? This guy had that. Even the big bouncer, who had to be a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the short guy, took half a step back. A hush fell over us. The — Harlan Coben

The sign says BLIND PEOPLE'S ARBORETUM. I stand, still out of breath, dripping sweat and marveling at such a beautiful concept - in China, of all places, where disabled people are still often considered flawed and superfluous. I have never seen anything like this, even in the United States or Europe, and yet here, hidden away on the edge of a noisy, bustling, modernizing Chinese city, someone has taken the effort and expense to plant this beautiful, tree-hugging garden - an island of stop-and-rest in a sea of smash-and-grab. 5. — Rob Gifford

Without trust, our relationships lack an essential ingredient for emotional intimacy. We need to be able to totally trust our partner with our deepest thoughts, dreams, fears, and secrets. — Cathy Burnham Martin

If anything, you know, I think losing makes me even more motivated. — Serena Williams

If I really believed in Friedman's economic theory, then I'd be quite satisfied to spend the rest of my life with a garden hose shoved down my throat, being filled with custard by representatives of the people of China. — Nigel Lawson

My goal is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better than I used to be. — Wayne W. Dyer

Round a turn of the Qin Fortress winds the Wei River,
And Yellow Mountain foot-hills enclose the Court of China;
Past the South Gate willows comes the Car of Many Bells
On the upper Palace-Garden Road-a solid length of blossom;
A Forbidden City roof holds two phoenixes in cloud;
The foliage of spring shelters multitudes from rain;
And now, when the heavens are propitious for action,
Here is our Emperor ready-no wasteful wanderer. — Wang Wei

I had hardly ever seen Great Granny Webster at that time, and yet her feelings interested me. She was little more to me than the silhouette of a formidable old woman dressed in black who appeared occasionally at family gatherings and made us feel that she was taking a dangerous risk with her upright spine when circumstances forced her to bend over and kiss her great-grandchildren. — Caroline Blackwood

The perfect symmetry between the dismantling of the wall of shame and the end of limitless Nature is invisible only to the rich Western democracies. The various manifestations of socialism destroyed both their peoples and their ecosystems, whereas the powers of the North and the West have been able to save their peoples and some of their countrysides by destroying the rest of the world and reducing its peoples to abject poverty. Hence a double tragedy: the former socialist societies think they can solve both their problems by imitating the West; the West thinks it has escaped both problems and believes it has lessons for others even as it leaves the Earth and its people to die. The West thinks it is the sole possessor of the clever trick that will allow it to keep on winning indefinitely, whereas it has perhaps already lost everything. — Anonymous

My mentoring program is pretty specific, it's about self-empowerment, about being able to find solutions through teamwork. That's one of my first goals. — Meredith Brooks

I wanted to play in New York when I was in my prime and I was young, fierce, lock-down [defender]. Madison Square Garden, that would have been sick. But right now, China is way more adventurous for me. — Metta World Peace

You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

It is, I think, the rarest of leisure, hard work mixed with hard pleasure, to refine one's time of deep thought or light regard into the utterly self-absorbed and equally and abundantly outward-seeking shape of the personal essay
a story comprised of found fact, of analyzed emotion, of fictive memory. — Barry Lopez

In some ways we were more remote than strangers because strangers at least have the possibility of yet unmade connections. — Jean Hegland

I handed my tools. The two of them reached down to help me out of the crater I'd dug. 'Isn't that a little deep?' Yoda asked. 'It'll help the roots get established,' I explained. 'Established where? China? — Laurie Halse Anderson

The drab brown front of the house made it look as if it had been built from rusty spare parts. Someone always put lace curtains in the windows of dreary houses, and Nick was unsurprised to see the curtains making their attempts in every window of this place. There was a china garden gnome on the doorstep, wearing a desperate, crazy smile.
"It's not so bad," Alan said.
"You never take me nice places anymore, baby." said Nick, and was mildly gratified by Alan's ring of laughter, like a living bell that had been caught by surprise when it was struck. — Sarah Rees Brennan