neighbors and nature

It is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool.

Epitaphs are not altogether to be trusted.

Walls have ears, but no tongue. Houses, trees, the dead — they tell no tales.

A relationship that has become artificial, and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one.

Though we can't always pick and choose our neighbors, neighbourliness is a virtue all the same.

If folks know they're not wanted, it just makes them all the more anxious to come.

Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth.

There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars.

Tunes, like fruit, have their seasons, and are, besides, ever forming new species.

Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.

-Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees, Cold Spring Press, Cold Spring Harbor: 2005 (orig. publication 1926)