Chiswick House

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

It seems a paradox, but nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

(John Ruskin)

Hastings

Whenever I find myself growing green about the mouth; whenever it is a damp and drizzly november in my soul; and especially whenever it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from knocking peoples hats off-then, I account it high time to set to sea. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean with me.

(Herman Melville. Moby Dick)

Give a man a fish ,and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

(Unknown)

Great Dixter

Christo was regularly to be seen on his knees in the garden. Most visitors would ask the usual questions-how many staff, how long does it take to clip the hedges, isn't it a lot of work? - and the questions had more to do with speaking to the owner than seriously wanting information. If Christo thought a question worthwhile he would answer it tantalisingly well. If he thought it was a lazy question, he would snap, whence his reputation for being as bad tempered as his dachshunds.

(Christopher Lloyd. His life at Great Dixter. Stephen Anderton)

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden".

(Thomas Jefferson)

Tintern Abbey

Here sinking spaces with dark boughs o'ergrown,

And there the naked quarries look a town,

At length our pilgrimages home appears,

Tintern her venerable fabric rears,

While the sun, mildly glancing in decline,

With its last gilding beautifies the shrine:

(A voyage to Tintern Abbey. Rev Dr Syned Davies. 1789)

A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods and glades intermixed: the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin, contrasted with the objects of nature; and elegant the line formed by the summits of the hills, which included the whole; making all together a very inchanting piece of scenery.

(William Gilpin 1782)

Avebury

And this stupendous fabric, which for some thousand years, had brav'd the continual assaults of weather, and by the nature of it, when left to itself, like the pyramids of Egypt, would have lasted as long as the globe, [has] fallen a sacrifice to the wretched ignorance and avarice of a little village unluckily plac'd within it.

(William Stukeley. Arbury)

The great stones were then in their wild state, so to speak. Some were half-covered by the grass, others stood up in cornfields or were entangled and overgrown in the copses, some were buried under turf. But they were wonderful and disquieting, and as I saw them then, I shall always remember them.

(Paul Nash)

Marlborough Downs

Happy the man whose wish and care

a few paternal acres bound,

content to breath his natures air

in his contented ground.

(The Quiet Life. Alexander Pope)

"Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings".

(Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy)

Paris

The last time I saw Paris

Her heart was warm and gay

I heard the laughter of her heart in every street cafe.

(Oscar Hammerstein II)

When good Englishmen die they always go to Paris. But you can spend a week there long before-provided you have £25, two good pair of comfortable shoes, and a good map of the city.

(Willa Petschek. The Guardian. 1961)

Paris

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones

Now hear the word of the Lord.

(Spiritual song, James Weldon Johnson)

When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call the police, but then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.

(Jack Handy. Deep Thoughts)