“The sense of conquest is in it. Not often is a collector able to obtain complete material in one assault. The plant may be at the moment sterile, or only in fruit or flower... but this lack has the advantage of stimulating the collector to go back in another season or year to complete the work.”
“This College of Agriculture was not established to serve or to magnify Cornell University. It belongs to the people of the State. The farmers of the State have secured it. Their influence has placed it here. They will keep it close to the ground. If there is any man standing on the land, unattached, uncontrolled, who feels that he has a disadvantages and a problem, this College of Agriculture stands for that man.”
“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
“One does not begin to make a garden until he wants a garden. To want a garden is to be interested in plants, in the winds and rains, in birds and insects, in the warm-smelling earth.”
“Is there any progress in horticulture? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. We cannot live in the past, good as it is; we must draw our inspiration from the future.”
“One never makes the quest unless the mind is open at the start. Herein does this mind differ from the advocate who must prove a case, from that of a preacher who must support a dogma, from that of the politician who must defend a party, from that of an organization that must enforce a policy. There are no parties in science.”
