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For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation.

Vita Sackville-West

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Vita Sackville-West
Age: 70 †
Born: 1892
Born: March 9
Died: 1962
Died: June 2
Author
Biographer
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Knole House
Knole
Lady Victoria Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West
Lady Nicolson
Victoria Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West
V. Sackville-West
Heart
Practicals
Years
Practical
Life
Pursuit
Broken
Lasts
Last
Fingernails
Back
Favourite
Sometimes
Occupation

More quotes by Vita Sackville-West

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It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.
Vita Sackville-West
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Summer makes a silence after spring.
Vita Sackville-West
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Growth is exciting growth is dynamic and alarming.
Vita Sackville-West
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Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
Vita Sackville-West
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I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them.
Vita Sackville-West
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One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling.
Vita Sackville-West
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How subtle is the relationship between the traveler and his luggage! He knows, as no one else knows, its idiosyncrasies, its contents ... and always some small nuisance which he wishes he had not brought had known, indeed, before starting that he would regret it, but brought it all the same.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life.
Vita Sackville-West
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that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!
Vita Sackville-West
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Flowers really do intoxicate me.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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There are no signposts in the sea.
Vita Sackville-West
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I miss you even more than I could have believed and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.
Vita Sackville-West
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Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.
Vita Sackville-West
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The wise traveler is he who is perpetually surprised.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth.
Vita Sackville-West