Garden Path Quotes & Sayings

If a prisoner hadn't lived outside, he would not
detest the dungeon. Desiring knows there's satisfaction beyond this. Straying maps
the path. A secret freedom opens through a crevice you can barely see. Your love
of many things proves they're one. Every separate stiff trunk and stem in the garden
connects with nimble root hairs underground. The awareness a wine drinker wants cannot
be tasted in wine, but that failure brings his deep thirst closer. So the heart keeps ignoring
the waterfall and the key, but there is one guiding through all the desiring restlessness. — Rumi

By morning, Adelaide was beginning to understand why she'd never completely understood how God worked. Given that He had made the bewildering, maddening, incomprehensible species that was man from His own image, it stood to reason that the Creator would be a complicated mass of logic never meant to be understood by the female mind. That, or the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had taken them even further off the path than she'd ever realized — Kristi Ann Hunter

We were young and the focus on human suffering gave our retreats gravitas. But suffering is not the goal, it is the beginning of the path. Now in the retreat I teach, I also encourage participants to awaken to their innate joy. From the very beginning I encourage them to allow the moments of joy and well-being to deepen, to spread throughout their body and mind. Many of us are conditioned to fear joy and happiness, yet joy is necessary for awakening. As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, 'When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine. — Jack Kornfield

A big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path. — Douglas Adams

Life on a small farm might seem primitive, but by living such a life we become able to discover the Great Path. I believe that one who deeply respects his neighborhood and everyday world in which he lives will be shown the greatest of all worlds. — Masanobu Fukuoka

The sound of running footsteps made them all start. Then the refectory door opened and the round, freckled face of Sister Belinda appeared. She was breathing heavily, and her veil was crooked, showing short tufts of red hair sprouting around her glowing face like unruly weeds in a parched garden.
"Excuse me, Mother, Sisters," she said. "But there is a police car waiting at the gate and what looks like the Black Maria behind it. Also, another car approaching from the farm and a uniformed constable coming in via the beach path. It would appear that the filth have us surrounded. — Sharon Bolton

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. — Jessamyn West

If we don't empower ourselves with knowledge, then we're gonna be led down a garden path. — Fran Drescher

Wisteria hangs over the eaves like clumps of ghostly grapes. Euphorbia's pale blooms billow like sea froth. Blood grass twists upward, knifing the air, while underground its roots go berserk, goosing everything in their path. A magnolia, impatient with vulvic flesh, erupts in front of the living room window. The recovering terrorist
holding a watering can filled with equal parts fish fertilizer and water, paisley gloves right up over her freckled forearms, a straw hat with its big brim shading her eyes, old tennis shoes speckled with dew
moves through her front garden. Her face, she tells herself, like a Zen koan. The look of one lip smiling. — Zsuzsi Gartner

I didn't do anything.I fumble with tears."
"You listened." She handed him back his bandanna.
"Mostly because tears render me speechless.You've a bit of garden dirt here."
Keeley came down the path just in time to see Brian gently wipe her mother's face with a blue bandanna.The tearstains had her leaping forward like a mama bear to her threatened cub.
"What is it? What did you do?" Hissing at Brian, she wrapped an arm around Adelia's shoudler.
"Nothing.I just knocked your mother down and kicked her a few times. — Nora Roberts

Anytime that is 'betwixt and between' or transitional is the faeries' favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational. — Brian Froud

Hordes of people [are] born, who live, yet who have done absolutely nothing to advance the race one iota. Their lives are hopeless repetitions ... Such human weeds clog up the path, drain up the energies and the resources of this little earth. We must clear the way for a better world; we must cultivate our garden. — Margaret Sanger

They can certainly expect to be very impressed with the technical aspects of the show, fooled and led up the garden path by the story and ultimately have a jolly good laugh! — Louise Jameson

The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the out-buildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away. — Susan Cooper

This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don't do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle and nurture our dissatisfaction. It's like trying to get the flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden. — Pema Chodron

A garden path,' write the landscape architects Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, 'can become the thread of a plot, connecting moments and incidents into a narrative. The narrative structure might be a simple chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end. It might be embellished with diversions, digressions, and picaresque twists, be accompanied by parallel ways (subplots), or deceptively fork into blind alleys like the althernative scenerios explored in a detective novel. — Rebecca Solnit

She pulls on her heavy boots and carries the water bucket past the rose bushes, past the herb garden, and back to the barn behind the house. Her steps kick up the scents of herbs: thyme, mint, and lemon balm. The plants send up new stems each year from the roots that survived the winter and grew up again along the path. The perfumed walk is a mystical part of her world. Walking here is her favorite part of mornings. Sometimes, this is the highlight of her day. — J.J. Brown

The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness. — Neil Gaiman

Vasco lived in Mangrove Heights, on a bluff overlooking the river. The first time Jed saw the house, he couldn't help thinking of the Empire of Junk. Towers jostled with gables, beams with columns. Gargoyles leered from the eaves, tongues sharp as the heads of arrows, eyes like shelled eggs. The front garden had been planted with all kinds of trees, so the house seemed to skulk. The path to the front door crackled with dead leaves. He could smell plaster, the inside of birds' nests, river sewage.
'I should have been born in a place like this,' Jed said, but Vasco was opening the door and didn't hear. — Rupert Thomson

Do you see the labyrinth out there?" She waved a graceful hand toward the garden. "Life is like that labyrinth, full of pathways that seem like the right way, but end up being detours. We go one way and then another until we find our true path. — Belinda M. Gordon

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left. — Quentin Crisp

You are a very interesting man," Rosamund stated. "And you have female friends. Actual friends. I don't think Lord Cosgrove can claim that."
He smiled, sincerely complimented. "Why thank you, my lady. So, as long as I'm here, shall we kiss again, or do you wish to proceed along the garden path a bit further?"
She backed up a step. "That's not very romantic."
It took more control than he expected to remain where he was and not pursue her. "Neither is your prospective husband. Don't expect posies. If you do receive them, they're more than likely deadly nightshade. — Suzanne Enoch

Seconds slowed and passed before Nicholas's mind's eye like a parade of snails upon the garden path. — Raymond E. Feist

Rikiu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and
watered the garden path. "Not clean enough," said Rikiu, when Shoan had finished his task, and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground."
"Young fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept." Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! — Kakuzo Okakura

For Pete's sake, Quinn, you should have seen him when I was pregnant. He practically set a peacock on fire for daring to walk across my path in the garden one day. — Alyssa Day

The 7 Timeless Virtues of Enlightened Living Virtue Symbol 1 Master Your Mind The Magnificent Garden 2 Follow Your Purpose The Towering Lighthouse 3 Practice Kaizen The Sumo Wrestler 4 Live with Discipline The Pink Wire Cable 5 Respect Your Time The Gold Stopwatch 6 Selflessly Serve Others The Fragrant Roses 7 Embrace the Present The Path of Diamonds — Robin S. Sharma

I should see the garden far better," said Alice to herself, "if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it - at least, no it doesn't do that - " (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), "but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, this turn goes to the hill, I suppose - no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way." And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself. — Lewis Carroll

Walk any path in Destiny's garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times. — Neil Gaiman

The truth is always simple, but the path to it is overgrown with thorns and lined with traps. Our fears and our emotions cloud even the brightest day and the clearest truth. Talk is cheap but actions are bloody. You can't plant the garden until you've overturned the soil. And nothing new can grow until the old dies. Lay your past to rest, so that your future can grow unimpeded by those ghosts. We can't change what we've done, but we can always change what we're going to do.
- Acheron — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path. — Jean Anouilh

The garden is a metaphor for life, and gardening is a symbol of the spiritual path. — Larry Dossey

new. But would she ever recover fully inside? How would she handle being alone in the house? Would she ever again be able to hear someone walking up the garden path without that twinge of fear and panic? He didn't know. The psyche regenerates itself, too, sometimes. We're often a damn sight more resilient than we'd imagine. — Peter Robinson

The Garden
En robe de parade.
- Samain
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion. — Ezra Pound

I believe eros dwells in our innermost being as the spirit of creative expression. To me, eros is a great path that we must walk, a song we listen to, a game that we hunt and enjoy, a lesson to learn, a garden where flowers bloom, a prodigious puzzle to solve, a book to read, a chapter to write, and an ocean to swim in. That's what eros is to me. — Salil Jha

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil. — John Steinbeck

The older a wizard grows, the more silent he becomes, like a woody vine growing over time to choke a garden path, deep and full of moss and snakes, running everywhere, impenetrable. — F.T. McKinstry

She got out and shut the door without looking back, picking her way through the snow to the black wooden door in the college wall. At least she hadn't told him not to follow. He watched as she carefully brushed the snow off the latch with her rolled umbrella before touching it with her suede gloves. She left the door half open behind her. He followed. When he reached the door he saw she had paused on the garden path leading to her hall and was doing something in the snow with the tip of her umbrella. Still not looking back, she moved on without waiting for him. When he reached the spot he saw that she had written 'I love you' in the snow. It was that night, he believed ever after, that she became pregnant. — Alan Judd

Sheryl Sandberg: "It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness."115 She couldn't be more right. You will not be as successful as you could be if you only like what you do and don't love it. Trite, perhaps, but true. Sheryl is also right in saying that combining passion and contribution is a luxury: not that it's expensive, but just rare. It's something that many people either can't figure out (how many people truly know their passion at the outset of their careers?) or can't afford (you may love whittling garden gnomes, but the world loves engineers and your spouse and children love a regular paycheck). — Eric Schmidt

Within my heart a garden grows,
wild with violets and fragrant rose.
bright daffodils line the narrow path,
my footsteps silent as i pass.
sweet tulips nod their heads in rest;
i kneel in prayer to seek gods best.
for round my garden a fence stands firm
to guard my heart so i can learn
who should enter, and who should wait
on the other side of my locked gate.
i clasp the key around my neck
and wonder if the time is yet.
if i unlocked the gate today,
would you come in? or run away? — Robin Jones Gunn

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not. — Neil Gaiman

The Thirteenth Woman In a town of twelve women there was a thirteenth. No one admitted she lived there, no mail came for her, no one spoke of her, no one asked after her, no one sold bread to her, no one bought anything from her, no one returned her glance, no one knocked on her door; the rain did not fall on her, the sun never shone on her, the day never dawned on her, the night never fell for her; for her the weeks did not pass, the years did not roll by; her house was unnumbered, her garden untended, her path not trod upon, her bed not slept in, her food not eaten, her clothes not worn; and yet in spite of all this she continued to live in the town without resenting what it did to her. — Lydia Davis

It may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The audience know what's coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting. — Mark Billingham

They shouldered their packs and took up their sticks, and walked round the corner to the west side of Bag End. 'Good-bye!' said Frodo, looking at the dark blank windows. He waved his hand, and then turned and (following Bilbo, if he had known it) hurried after Peregrin down the garden-path. They jumped over the low place in the hedge at the bottom and took to the fields, passing into the darkness like a rustle in the grasses. — J.R.R. Tolkien

My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand - armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo?
To save a girl who didn't want to be saved? — Kami Garcia

The material and the spiritual are but two parts of one universe and one truth. By overstressing one part or the other, man fails to achieve the balance necessary for harmonious development ... Practice the art of living in this world without losing your inner peace of mind. Follow the path of balance to reach the inner wondrous garden of Self-Realization. — Paramahansa Yogananda

At one moment we deplore our birth and state and aspire to an ascetic exaltation; the next we are overcome by the smell of some old garden path and weep to hear the thrushes sing. — Virginia Woolf

Although I usually think I know what I'm going to be writing about, what I'm going to say, most of the time it doesn't happen that way at all. At some point I get misled down a garden path, I get surprised by an idea that I hadn't anticipated getting, which is a little bit like being in a laboratory. — Lewis Thomas

The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea is amusing and enticing; but whether the Almighty is laughing at it and is leading me up the garden path
that I cannot know. — Albert Einstein

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.
Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall.
You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.
Though you look at others with contempt,
It's you whose body will be reduced to dust.
Humanity is all one body;
To torture another is simply to wound yourself.
[ ... ]Make your path straight now, by the bright light of day;
For pitch darkness will come without warning. — Rahman Baba

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road
A gateless garden, and an open path:
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin ... — Shirley Jackson

When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember. Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. And rest. — Neil Gaiman

May the sound of the bell penetrate deep into the cosmos. Even in the darkest spots living beings are able to hear it clearly. So that all suffering in them cease. Understanding comes to their heart, and they transcend the path of sorrow and death." "The universal dharma door is already open; the sound of the rising tide is already heard clearly. The miracle happens. A beautiful child appears in the heart of the lotus flower. One single drop of this compassionate water is enough to bring back the refreshing spring to our mountains and rivers." "Listening to the bell I feel the afflictions in me dissolve. My mind is calm, my body relaxed. A smile is born on my lips. Following the sound of the bell, my breath brings me back to the safe island of mindfulness. In the garden of my heart, the flowers of peace bloom beautifully. — Thich Nhat Hanh