Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.

Beverley Nichols

Categorized in : Book Men Cat

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

Beverley Nichols

anniversary romantic funny

Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.

Beverley Nichols

cat expression house

We both know, you and I, that if all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace.

Beverley Nichols

would-be men world

Life in the country teaches one that the really stimulating things are the quiet, natural things, and the really wearisome things are the noisy, unnatural things. It is more exciting to stand still than to dance. Silence is more eloquent than speech. Water is more stimulating than wine. Fresh air is more intoxicating than cigarette smoke. Sunlight is more subtle than electric light. The scent of grass is more luxurious than the most expensive perfume. The slow, simple observations of the peasant are more wise than the most sparkling epigrams of the latest wit.

Beverley Nichols

wise life country

Every moment of this strange and lovely life from dawn to dusk, is a miracle. Somewhere, always a rose is opening its petals to the dawn. Somewhere, always, a flower is fading in the dusk.

Beverley Nichols

miracle flower rose

I had never 'taken a cutting' before ... Do you realize that the whole thing is miraculous? It is exactly as though you were to cut off your wife's leg, stick it in the lawn, and be greeted on the following day by an entirely new woman, sprung from the leg, advancing across the lawn to meet you.

Beverley Nichols

cutting garden taken

Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are are then prepared to ignore them until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this. It doesn't like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance.

Beverley Nichols

gay heart spring

A garden is a place for shaping a little world of your own according to your heart's desire.

Beverley Nichols

garden desire heart

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

Beverley Nichols

garden earth life

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes.

Beverley Nichols

cat garden eye

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

Beverley Nichols

finding-yourself bursting laughter

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all.

Beverley Nichols

cat garden animal

Well, I love geraniums, and anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person.

Beverley Nichols

wells persons doe

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight.

Beverley Nichols

flower summer beautiful

It is only to the gardener that time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals.

Beverley Nichols

stealing giving years

A gardener is never shut out from his garden, wherever he may be. Its comfort never fails. Though the city may close about him, and the grime and soot descend upon him, he can still wander in his garden, does he but close his eyes.

Beverley Nichols

garden eye cities

As any psychologist will tell you, the worst thing you can possibly do to a woman is to deprive her of a grievance.

Beverley Nichols

psychologist women grievance

The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.

Beverley Nichols

body soul sake

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.

Beverley Nichols

garden flower overcoming

Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

Beverley Nichols

chapter marriage poetry book