Nan Fairbrother

Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the…

— Nan Fairbrother

the large black slugs ... come out at dusk. Enormous slugs. As big as crocodiles. So huge we need a gun to…

— Nan Fairbrother

Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day ...…

— Nan Fairbrother

children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

— Nan Fairbrother

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.

— Nan Fairbrother

the urgent crowds out the essential.

— Nan Fairbrother

leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.

— Nan Fairbrother

... garden books are quite unconscious that besides telling us how to turn our patch of earth into a garden, they are…

— Nan Fairbrother

We envy people we love for being always in their own loved company.

— Nan Fairbrother

It is always one of the tragedies of any relationship, even between people sensitive to each other's moods, that the moments of…

— Nan Fairbrother

As every real estate agent knows, a poor house in good surroundings will sell for a higher price than a better house…

— Nan Fairbrother

I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of…

— Nan Fairbrother

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

— Nan Fairbrother

We love those we are happy with. We do. For how else can we know we love them, or how else define…

— Nan Fairbrother

There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that…

— Nan Fairbrother

“Most of anyone's life is a preoccupation with urgent inessentials. If we divide our affairs into what matters for a day or…

— Nan Fairbrother

A collection of plants is not a landscape, any more than a list of choice words is a poem. The merit is…

— Nan Fairbrother

The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love…

— Nan Fairbrother

Every search has its own momentum. It is why a search makes such an excellent plot for a film or story.

— Nan Fairbrother

A garden is one of the few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.

— Nan Fairbrother

Perhaps the way with any obsession is to ignore it simply. Not to fight it, since it draws strength from any contact…

— Nan Fairbrother

Understanding, above all, is a gift we should never offer uninvited.

— Nan Fairbrother

The sorrows we imagine are more profound and inconsolable than real life leaves us time for.

— Nan Fairbrother

happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

— Nan Fairbrother

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do,…

— Nan Fairbrother