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"I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera."
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"The condition you're in at this moment is the product of your previous thoughts, to change your condition, change your thoughts."
Personal Development

"A full mind is unlucky if a good idea comes to enter inside, an empty mind is unlucky if a bad idea comes to enter inside!"

"Anything that ends is a dream. This whole universe is a dream."

"A wise quote can only change a wise man! Therefore, wise sayings are for the wise men, not for the fools! The sunflowers turn their face toward the Sun, the fools, toward the darkness!"

"Simple things have greater power than the complicated things!"

"Don't ever rule out the option of U-turn in your life, because one day you will need it! The moment you realize that you are going to the wrong direction, turn to the right direction instantly, with a beautiful U-turn!"

"There is so much hope in a little flower and so many flowers in a little hope!"

"For those who wander in the depths, there is nothing deep!"

"It is not the jumps you made in your life but mostly the jumps you haven't made are the real source of regrets in your life!"

"Nobody is exempt from the surprises of life!"
Explore more quotes by Ian Hamilton Finlay


"For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not."


"However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really."


"My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public."


"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time."


"Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it."


"But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still."


"I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions."


"If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work."


"The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture."
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