Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest, a continued one thro' the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table. I am still devoted to the garden. But tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Char

A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.

C.S. Lewis

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Ours is the century of enforced travel. . . of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.

John Berger, Ev'ry Time We Say G

Deliver me from Swedish furniture.Deliver me from clever art......May I never be complete.May I never be content.May I never be perfect.

Chuck Palahniuk

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Oscar Wilde

And, most important, we have to shift our understanding of ourselves as separate individuals, each seeking our own welfare, to an understanding of how we fit into social, biological, and physical environments.

Robert E. Ornstein

I always wanted to work at 'Take A Break' magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote 'Garnethill' because I didn't get that job!

Denise Mina

That's not all our crops can do. We are also learning how to transform plants into factories. We can now raise plants that will create enzymes that would otherwise be created in chemical factories.

Thomas Carper

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Girls had never been important. I'd had a girlfriend or two and had liked them a lot but it wasn't love, because my first love was tennis.

Boris Becker

I support legal immigration.

Heather Wilson