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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
Life
Pursuit
Broken
Lasts
Last
Fingernails
Back
Favourite
Sometimes
Occupation
Heart
Practicals
Years
Practical

More quotes by Vita Sackville-West

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The Saluki is a marvel of elegance.
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Tools have their own integrity.
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Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.
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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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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
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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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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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What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.
Vita Sackville-West
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Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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a letter, by its arrival, defrauds us of a whole secret region of our existence, the only region indeed in which the true pleasure of life may be tasted, the region of imagination, creative and protean, the clouds and beautiful shapes of whose heaven are destroyed by the wind of reality.
Vita Sackville-West
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There is always something else to do. A gardener should have nine times as many lives as a cat.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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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
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My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme.
Vita Sackville-West
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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
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Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions.
Vita Sackville-West
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Travel is a private pleasure, since it consists entirely of things felt and things seen.
Vita Sackville-West
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[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.
Vita Sackville-West
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I worshipped dead men for their strength, Forgetting I was strong.
Vita Sackville-West