"So, perhaps understandably, the young but wizened king decided to make hay while the sun shone. Hence his laziness. Hence his apparent lack of a long-term plan, besides survival. Hence his almost obsessive interest in "diversion": having fun and relieving boredom through the pursuit and patronage of art, music, literature, the theater, witty conversation, gambling, drinking, and womanizing. A positive result of these tendencies was that the Restoration court was the greatest center for cultural patronage of its day. It has been credited with introducing England to the comedy of intrigue, the first stage actresses, the man's three-piece suit, periwigs, and such delicacies as champagne, tea, and ice cream."

"Charles II's willingness to slight old friends for new ones was, in fact, characteristic of the man. A his reign progressed, it became increasingly clear that his loyalty to servants and favorites was undependable; that his intelligence frequently manifested itself as cunning and duplicity; that his charm was often deceptive and self-serving; that his easy-going nature was also lazy and indecisive; and that his flexibility was, in part, the corollary of having no long-term goal or plan. Basically, Charles II was a cynic- and who could blame him? After all, the people who now professed their undying loyalty and affection for him were the very ones who had fought against his father. He would never fully understand their prejudices. On his last visit to his dominions in 1651 he had been forced to hide in a tree before sneaking out of the country in disguise. During the ensuing exile of over eighteen years he had been threatened, denounced, promised to, lied to, used, and spied on by them- as well as by every government in Europe. Often, he would find that a confidential servant was in the pay of his enemies; or that a fellow monarch had used him as a pawn in some diplomatic game of chess with Cromwell. No wonder that he trusted no one. He never knew when the English, Scots, and Irish would change their minds once more and force him to go "on his travels" again."

"Better than a play!"

"On the other hand, Charles II forgave many surviving Roundheads, reappointing them to the offices they had performed so well for the Commonwealth and Protectorate, rewarding them for their new-found loyalty with titles, pensions, and lands. This eased bitterness on their part and it kept experienced and competent people in government. But it also left many old Royalists, impoverished by their long and faithful service to the Stuarts in defeat and exile, resentful that they were not rewarded more generously. In fact, most Royalist nobility and gentry regained the lands lost during the Interregnum, but those further down the social scale were not so lucky. A fund of £60,000 was established for indigent officers, but individual pay-outs were tiny. Hence the dark Royalist joke that the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion meant indemnity for the king's former enemies and oblivion for his friends."

"The Devil is an echo Of search unsatisfied."

"Winter is gone, and spring is over. The cuckoo-flowers grow mauver and mauver"

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul."

"O'er the wires the electric message came, "He is no better; he is much the same.""

"The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound."

"Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal."

"[N]o verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess."

"[I]n all periods of transitional thought and belief the conscience suffers, since its old sanctions have been removed and none other have yet taken their place. It is undermined without being adequately propped up."

"Women are more frequently charming than men, because they are less self-conscious."

"[C]harm appertains to the essence of the person or thing endowed with it. It cannot be acquired, it cannot be got rid of, and its results are produced without effort, since the person who has it cannot help producing them."

"Repress your antipathies, cultivate your sympathies."

"People living and dead, things past and present, all are contributories to that diminutive stream, oneself; a reflection which is essentially consoling, since it associates one with the sum of things and prevents one from living in barren isolation."

"Doth logic in the lily hide, And where's the reason in the rose?"

"If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise."

"Where in the lily lurks the mind, Where in the rose discern the soul?More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake; The mountains yet more heartless seem. […]It is their silence that appals, Their aspect motionless that awes, When searching spirit vainly calls On the effect to bare the Cause."

"[W]henever one wants to cite something wise and true, one has to go either to the ancients or to the eighteenth century for it."

"English maidens are, in certain respects, to Italian maidens as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine."

"One can put up with, indeed more than put up with, a certain amount of technical carelessness in Poetry, provided it be in other respects of a very high order, as not unoften, for instance, in Shakespeare and Byron. But similar blemishes in a picture would be all but fatal to it in the estimation of connoisseurs, since it would be the first thing that struck them in it."

"He was an Englishman of Englishmen, of the old school of charming manners, flavoured by occasional downrightness of speech."

"He was not far wrong who said that, for choice, he would be a beautiful woman from seventeen to thirty, a successful General from thirty to fifty, and a Cardinal for the rest of his days. But of course he was thinking of Cardinals as they were in the days of Leo X, Julius II, and Sextus V, not as they are today, extremely pious and rather pinched for means."

"A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing, but it is not dangerous to the imagination. Knowledge is to the imagination what fuel is to flame. A little feeds it; a great deal extinguishes it."

"[T]he Caesars of this world act sagaciously, perhaps, in making as much of their purple as possible. The world is largely governed by tailors and upholsterers."

"Hospitality should be accidental, spontaneous, and impulsive, not pre-arranged and calculated."

"[E]xclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society."

"A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences, and character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten, but withal manifest autobiography. Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like."

"No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it."

"Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble."

"[T]here is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to admit that you were mistaken. Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder."

"Imagination should A reconciler, not a rebel, be, To teach the heart of man to apprehend Nature's vicissitudes, and bear his own, With sympathetic fancy."

"When the foal and broodmare hinny, And in every cut-down spinney Ladysmocks grow mauve and mauver, Then the winter days are over"

"Why should you, Because the world is foolish, not be wise?"

"There is no office in this needful world But dignifies the doer if done well."

"Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves."

"'Tis a world Where all is bought, and nothing's worth the price."

"Of all our feigned affections, there is none So hollow, selfish, and injurious, As what we christen Patriotism."

"He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still."

"So long as Faith with Freedom reigns And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act, Life is worth living still."

"Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight;"

"Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here;"

"Who once believed will never wholly doubt."

"Who once has doubted never quite believes."

"Public opinion is no more than this, What people think that other people think."

"Death is master of lord and clown. Close the coffin and hammer it down."

"Omit death's certain sharpness, life would lack The salt that lends it savour."

"Let Will but set its appetite on war, And Reason will promptly invent offence, And furnish blood with arguments."

"Love and naughtiness are always in their teens."