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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

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Days I Enjoy Are

Vita Sackville-West

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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.

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I Cannot Bear That You / Should Think Me Faithful, When I Am Untrue.

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.

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My Garden All Is Overblown With Roses,/ My Spirit All Is Overblown With Rhyme.

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.

I Loved You When Love Was Spring, And May, Loved You When Summer Deepened Into June, And Now When Autumn Yellows All The Leaves.

I Suppose The Pleasure Of Country Life Lies Really In The Eternally Renewed Evidences Of The Determination To Live.

Travel Is The Most Private Of Pleasures. There Is No Greater Bore Than The Travel Bore. We Do Not In The Least Want To Hear What He Has Seen In Hong-kong.

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Summer Makes A Silence After Spring.

I Worshipped Dead Men For Their Strength, Forgetting I Was Strong.

Successful Gardening Is Not Necessarily A Question Of Wealth, It Is A Question Of Love, Taste, And Knowledge.

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.

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.

But You, Oh Gardener, Poet That You Be / Though Unaware, Now Use Your Seeds Like Words / And Make Them Lilt With Color Nicely Flung.

It Is A Sad Moment When The First Phlox Appears. It Is The Amber Light Indicating The End Of The Great Burst Of Early Summer And Suggesting That We Must Now Start Looking Forward To Autumn. Not That I Have Any Objection To Autumn As A Season, Full Of Its Own Beauty; But I Just Cannot Bear To See Another Summer Go, And I Recoil From What The First Hint Of Autumn Means.

I Miss You Even More Than I Could Have Believed; And I Was Prepared To Miss You A Good Deal.

Long Distance Relationship

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A Man And His Tools Make A Man And His Trade.

Autumn In Felted Slipper Shuffles On, Muted Yet Fiery.--vita Sackville-west

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How Poor And Disheartening A Thing Is Experience Compared With Hope!

I Have Come To The Conclusion, After Many Years Of Sometimes Sad Experience, That You Cannot Come To Any Conclusion At All.

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See The Last Orange Roses, How They Blow / Deeper And Heavier Than In Their Prime, / In One Defiant Flame Before They Go.

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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?

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What Is Beautiful Is Good, And Who Is Good Will Soon Be Beautiful.

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Not Seeing Is Half-believing.

A Good Start In Life Is As Important To Plants As It Is To Children: They Must Develop Strong Roots In A Congenial Soil, Otherwise They Will Never Make The Growth That Will Serve Them Richly According To Their Needs In Their Adult Life.

[on Writing:] The Most Egotistic Of Occupations, And The Most Gratifying While It Lasts.

Flowers Really Do Intoxicate Me.

Things Were Not Tragic For Us Then, Because Although We Cared Passionately We Didn't Care Deeply.

I Cannot Abide The Mr. And Mrs. Noah Attitude Towards Marriage; The Animals Went In Two By Two, Forever Stuck Together With Glue.

The Wise Traveler Is He Who Is Perpetually Surprised.

Still, No Gardener Would Be A Gardener If He Did Not Live In Hope.

Travel Is In Sad Case. It Is Uncomfortable, It Is Expensive; It Is A Source Of Annoyance To Our Friends, And Of Loneliness To Ourselves.

There Are No Signposts In The Sea.

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.

It Is Dreadful How I Miss You, And Everything That Everybody Says Seems Flat And Stupid.

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.

All The Small Squalors Of The Body, Known Only To Oneself, Insignificant In Youth, Easily Dismissed, In Old Age Became Dominant And Entered Into Fulfilment Of The Tyranny They Had Always Threatened.

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The Farmer And The Gardener Are Both Busy, The Gardener Perhaps The More Excitable Of The Two, For He Is More Of The Amateur, Concerned With The Creation Of Beauty Rather Than With The Providing Of Food. Gardening Is A Luxury Occupation; An Ornament, Not A Necessity, Of Life.

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One Must Be Businesslike, Although The Glass Is Falling.

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I Like Owls. I Admire Their Intransigent Spirit. I Have Respected Them Deeply Ever Since I Met A Baby Owl In A Wood, When It Fell Over Dead, Apparently From Sheer Temper, Because I Dared To Approach It. It Defied Me First, And Then Died. I Have Never Forgotten The Horror And Shame I Experienced When That Soft Fluffy Thing (towards Which I Had Nothing But The Most Humanitarian Motives) Fell Dead From Rage At My Feet.

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.

When, And How, And At What Stage Of Our Development Did Spirituality And Our Strange Notions Of Religion Arise? The Need For Worship Which Is Nothing More Than Our Frightened Refuge Into Propitiation Of A Creator We Do Not Understand? A Detective Story, The Supreme Who-done-it, Written In Indecipherable Hieroglyphics, No Rosetta Stone Supplied By The Consummate Mystifier To Tease Us Poor Fumbling Unravellers Of His Plot.

To Hope For Paradise Is To Live In Paradise, A Very Different Thing From Actually Getting There.

For Bees Are Captious Folk / And Quick To Turn Against The Lubber's Touch.

The Saluki Is A Marvel Of Elegance.

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