Quotes & Sayings About House Plants

The old frame house down near the waterfront had never held so many people since the day it was put up. It must have been a pleasant place fifty years before: trees overhanging the limpid water, cows grazing in the meadows on both sides of the river, little frame houses like this one dotting the banks here and there.
It wasn't a pleasant place any more: garbage scows, coal yards, the river a greasy gray soup. Dead-end blocks of decrepit tenements on one side of it, lumberyards and ice-plants and tall stacks on the other.
The house was set far back from the street, hemmed in by the blank walls that rose around it.
("I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes") — Cornell Woolrich

Sir, come quick. They've found a body in the canal.
I blew out my breath. Saved by the corpse.
... The corpse in question was Nigel Nicabar.
The watchers had collected the bodies found in Nigel's house, garden, and canal, and put them in the greenhouse located at the back of the garden. The necromancer's talents weren't with living things, so the greenhouse's tables were pretty much empty - at least of plants. Dead goblins lay under sheets and tarps. I couldn't help feeling that Nigel would have approved. What he wouldn't have approved of was being included among them. Nigel wouldn't have been caught dead surrounded by goblins, yet that's exactly how and where he was. I don't think he would have appreciated the irony. — Lisa Shearin

Fortunate are the nations that can build wooden houses. Because wood breathes, transforms, deteriorates, like us. It is also important to have flowers and plants where we live, because they breathe, too. Contemplating a flower for three seconds can be a captivating solitary journey back to original geometry, which is always revitalizing. — Henryk Skolimowski

The plants have taught me they don't like to be potted too long - it's very restrictive to them so I would plant them outside if you could, or in a green house. — Doreen Virtue

The Botanischer Garten in Berlin has one of Europe's finer winter trails, leading in careful order from glasshouses devoted to African-American and Australian desert species, through a fine collection of tropical plants, and on to the orchid house. — John Burnside

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don't know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them. — Andrea Gibson

I'm not speaking metaphorically, plants that you have in your house, or if you've ever made friends with a tree somewhere, there is a moment that these beings can aid you. — Frederick Lenz

I have these plants in my house that are dying, so having a robot butler to water them when I'm away would be pretty handy. — Cary Fukunaga

plus a porch that runs along three sides of the house. I told Ma once the Howards had a room just for company, a room just for books, and a room just for plants, and she said that was three rooms too many. First time I ever saw any envy in my ma. David — Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

My physical eyes are like sunglasses, filtering out the colors, but when I'm out here, the aura that emanates from every living thing is clearly visible to me. People, animals, and even plants are surrounded by this transparent bubble of color. Over the years, I've learned that the colors can tell you quite a bit about a person. Like right now, Rei is surrounded by this lemonade yellow, which looks nice, but it's the same shade of yellow my mom has whn she's sold a house to someone and the loan falls through.
Sigh. — Gina Rosati

All the plants in my house are dead - I shot them last night. I was teasing them by watering them with ice cubes. — Steven Wright

There are many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That's where it starts. — Banana Yoshimoto

Have lots of plants in your house. Nature and plants understand something about stillness and silence. As you interact with the green world, you will find a peace will enter your life. — Frederick Lenz

This morning I woke up at four and lay awake for an hour or so in a bad state. It is raining again. I got up finally and went about the daily chores, waiting for the sense of doom to lift - and what did it was watering the house plants. Suddenly joy came back because I was fulfilling a simple need, a living one. Dusting never has this effect (and that may be why I am such a poor housekeeper!), but feeding the cats when they are hungry, giving Punch clean water, makes me suddenly feel calm and happy. Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way. — May Sarton

There, on the far side of of the Atlantic, would be Maine, but despite the shared ocean, her island and this one were worlds apart. Where Inishmaan was gray and brown, its fragile man-made soil supporting only the hardiest of low-growing plants, the fertile Quinnipeague invited tall pines in droves, not to mention vegetables, flowers, and improbable, irrepressible herbs. Lifting her head, eyes closed now, she breathed in the damp Irish air and the bit of wood smoke that drifted on the cold ocean wind. Quinnipeague smelled of wood smoke, too, since early mornings there could be chilly, even in summer. But the wood smoke would clear by noon, giving way to the smell of lavender, balsam, and grass. If the winds were from the west, there would be fry smells from the Chowder House; if from the south, the earthiness of the clam flats; if from the northeast, the purity of sweet salt air. — Barbara Delinsky

We carry our house plants from one window to another to give them the proper heat, light, and moisture. Should we not be at least as careful of ourselves? — William George Jordan

Karl Rove thinks we shouldn't have Hillary Clinton in the White House because she fell and hit her head a couple years ago, spent three days in the hospital, and maybe she has brain damage. You know, I don't recall the Republicans being this concerned with mental fitness during the years when Reagan was talking to house plants in the White House. — Bill Maher

As Charlie is leaving the house, she somehow trips on the threshold and nearly face-plants onto the ground. I roll my eyes. How is it possible out of all the people in this world, this is the soul I've come to collect? — Victoria Scott

I have no plants in my house. They won't live for me. Some of them don't even wait to die, they commit suicide. — Jerry Seinfeld

I would use going into nature to clear myself - trees and plants including having plants at your house is a wonderfully natural way to continuously clear yourself. — Doreen Virtue

Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and took a few minutes with each of them: ageratum, coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia. The yarrow, he said, had rose-red flowers on two-foot stems. Achillea millefolium, the plant Achilles used to heal wounds. — Frederick Weisel

I am absolutely enraptured by the atmosphere of a wreck. A dead ship is the house of a tremendous amount of life-fish and plants. The mixture of life and death is mysterious, even religious. There is the same sense of peace and mood that you feel on entering a cathedral. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

I feel at peace, content. My questions have been answered. I can accept my alone-life, knowing it's purpose. Interaction, love, is the purpose and the core. Now I see the possibility of a different kind of interaction - and it is something that I can start to learn as soon as I get home, beginning with my little place/house and my plants. How to interact with people this way I do not yet know. [Gift Bearer] — Steven Foster

In reality it was just what is usually
seen in the houses of people of moderate
means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others
like themselves: there are damasks,
dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and
polished bronzes
all the things people of
a certain class have in order to
resemble other people of that class. His
house was so like the others that it
would never have been noticed, but to him it
all seemed to be quite exceptional. — Leo Tolstoy

The plants and animals all around us were waking from a long sleep, and our yard was slowly transformed into a carpet of soft green, and the skies above our house were filled with choruses of birdsong once again. — Arlene Stafford-Wilson

Then I didn't think much about it, I just did it. I started wearing some of the things he left behind, especially his bathrobe, some shirts too, but only in the house. I read his books, I am embarrassed at this. I also did some things to the place I knew he would like. He always complained about my plants, so I got rid of them. It seems strange to think about it now, but at the time I found some comfort in it. [ACCOUNTANT, AGE 38, SEPARATED AFTER LIVING TOGETHER 13 YEARS] — Diane Vaughan

I'm a nature lover, I want at any given time to be able to bring lots of plants into my house, have lots of light flooding in, have lots of natural elements. Reclaimed lumbers, actual live edge slab tables. I do love technology, but I want the TV to be hidden away a little, I want the speakers to be up on the ceiling. — Sebastian Clovis

There are absolutely no high-maintenance items in my house of any kind. Plants, pets or husbands. — Carolyn Porco

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all. — Paul Hawken

George W. Bush was a silver spoon dolt with no record to speak of other than bankruptcy and selling tropical plants, and we let him sail into the White House, but Barack talks about religious fundamentalism and guns being prevalent in poor areas, and we roast him for weeks? — Adam McKay

Elron: These were happy woods. The entire place was happy from the house to the gardens to the woods. But this one little garden had something extra. It was excited. Something odd for plants and trees. They were prone to joy, happiness, sorrow and tranquility but not something as active as excitement. Someone had spent a lot of time here and a bit of their personality had seeped into the place. That someone was excited about life and probably young. Strange. Few youth of any race knew enough to transmit their feelings. The trees whispered about a person, moving and bending with change. The plants gossiped about tenderness shown them but the air breathed words of rage and despair in my ear. The plants didn't know gender but I got the impression of a woman, a young woman. The altar indicated she was a witch. A good witch. — N.E. Conneely

We've sued out-of-state power plants that are polluting our air and led a coalition of attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts against efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives to remove critical environmental regulations that protect New York communities from toxic pollution. — Eric Schneiderman

Dawn is breaking, sending pale fingers of cold light across the hills that surround the Harrisons' farmyard. Jess is being difficult, rearing and trying to bolt away from the truck, and we've been at it for some time when Liam comes out of the house and sees our predicament. He marches across the yard, picks up a piece of cut-off hosepipe and walks up behind the pony. I see the look on Alec's face as his dad approaches, and he's not happy. Liam tells his son to "walk her up" and then cracks the mare around the rump with the piece of pipe when she plants her feet. The sound of the pipe hitting the pony echoes across the hills and rings in my ears. Jess starts to rear but earns another whack around the backside, so scrambles up the ramp and stands trembling in the truck. Alec quickly ties her up, his expression unreadable. — Kate Lattey

Spread over what must have been at least a hectare or two was the most beautiful garden he had ever seen.
There was an entire miniature forest of cedar, cypress, and other sweet-smelling pines that couldn't normally live in the hot and dry Agrabah. There were formal rows of roses and other delicately petaled flowers. There was a garden just of mountain plants. There was a pool filled with flowering white lilies and their pads, and pink lotuses taller than most men. There was a fountain as big as a house and shaped like an egg. There was a delicate white aviary that looked like a giant's birdcage. Strangely, there were no birds in it.
And everywhere, entwined around every tiny building and every balustrade and every topiary ball, was jasmine. White jasmine, pink jasmine, yellow jasmine, night-flowering jasmine... the smell was heady enough to make Aladdin feel a little drunk.
Jasmine.
This was her garden. — Liz Braswell

Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, 'I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls. — Annie Dillard

I think the hard thing about this job [stand-up] I mean, I think this part is great but that the traveling is y'know, 'cause 'cause I'm gone a lot from home and this time I'm out for three-and-a-half weeks without going home, and that's hard, to be gone three-and-a-half weeks 'cause then I have to ask my friends, Would you mind going to the house and watering the plants, and turn some lights on and make it look like somebody's home, and make sure that the mobile over the crib isn't tangled or the baby's gonna get bored ... — Ellen DeGeneres

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique - but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby - with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker. — Carl Sandburg

It takes 16 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. It takes 1 lb of grain to make 1 lb of bread. So, how many more plants are you eating if you eat a pound of beef? Secondly, I've harvested cabbages and pulled up carrots out of the ground and I've been in slaughter-houses and seen the animals have their brains bashed out with sledgehammers and their throats cut - the experiences are not comparable. — John Robbins

We have two minds. One thinks, the other knows. The mind that knows goes back many lifetimes. This is the mind of the one heart, of all things: the trees, the plants, the clouds, the rivers, the mountains. The more time you spend with this mind, the more you will see Spirit around you.
Forrest Hayes (2012-02-23). Na Bolom: House of the Jaguar (Kindle Locations 1865-1866). Musa Publishing. Kindle Edition. — Forrest Hayes

Many people I've met believe that plants are made up of soil-that the tree outside your house, for example, is mostly made from the soil in which it grew. That's a common mistake. That tree is mostly made up of one of the gases in our air (carbon dioxide) and water (hydrogen and oxygen). Trees are solidified air and sunlight. — Thom Hartmann

I'm a real phony, one of those half-baked hot-house plants we're growing nowadays, instead of the honest-to-God two-fisted women we should be ... — Elaine Dundy

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