Vita Sackville-West Quotes

Quotes about:

• The more one gardens, the more one learns; And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  79 Copy quote

• The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Funny, Optimistic, Garden

  83 Copy quote

• There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree

  Vita Sackville-West

  Love, Marriage, Passion

  Victoria Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (1985). “No Signposts in the Sea”, Penguin Group USA

  67 Copy quote

• A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Flower, Thinking, May

  55 Copy quote

• I loved you when love was Spring, and May, Loved you when summer deepened into June, and now when autumn yellows all the leaves.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Love, Summer, Spring

  74 Copy quote

• Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, When I have no engagements written on my block, When no one comes to disturb my inward peace, When no one comes to take me away from myself And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle, A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection, Being so contrived that it takes too long a time To get myself back to myself when they have gone.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Block, Reflection, Mirrors

  42 Copy quote

• I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Success, Years, Experience

  1953 ‘InYour Garden Again’.

  63 Copy quote

• Still, no gardener would be a gardener if he did not live in hope.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Gardening, Would Be, Gardener

  43 Copy quote

• Successful gardening is not necessarily a question of wealth, it is a question of love, taste, and knowledge.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Successful, Gardening, Taste

  49 Copy quote

• Flowers really do intoxicate me.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Flower

  66 Copy quote

• I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Love, Long Distance Relationship, Missing

  73 Copy quote

• I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Art, Clever, Love You

  62 Copy quote

• I like muddling things up; and if a herb looks nice in a border, then why not grow it there? Why not grow anything anywhere so long as it looks right where it is? That is, surely, the art of gardening.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Art, Nice, Long

  43 Copy quote

• It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Life, Time, Writing

  Vita Sackville-West, Mary Ann Caws (2003). “Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings”, p.125, Palgrave Macmillan

  43 Copy quote

• But you, oh gardener, poet that you be / Though unaware, now use your seeds like words / And make them lilt with color nicely flung.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Color, Gardening, Use

  Vita Sackville-West, Victoria Sackville-West (2004). “The Garden”, Frances Lincoln Limited

  40 Copy quote

• It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose,
  it has something of the cabbage rose's voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it
  sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,
  making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had
  still appeared to be a living beauty.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Summer, Book, Fall

  130 Copy quote

• It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Sweet, Art, Design

  19 Copy quote

• The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
  twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Children, Twilight, Weather

  18 Copy quote

• Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life.... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Beauty, Luxury, People

  10 Copy quote

• What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Beauty, Beautiful, Women

  10 Copy quote

• Not seeing is half-believing.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Inspirational, Believe, Half

  39 Copy quote

• My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Garden, Rose, Spirit

  8 Copy quote

• See the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Blow, Flames, Orange

  Vita Sackville-West, Victoria Sackville-West (2004). “The Garden”, Frances Lincoln Limited

  11 Copy quote

• The true solitary ... will feel that he is himself only when he is alone; when he is in company he will feel that he perjures himself, prostitutes himself to the exactions of others; he will feel that time spent in company is time lost; he will be conscious only of his impatience to get back to his true life.

  Vita Sackville-West

  True Life, Solitude, Impatience

  10 Copy quote

• Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Hate, Safety, Ambitious

  34 Copy quote

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