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"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."
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"We cannot measure time. We can only measure changes of life and the universe."

"I wouldn't ask too much of her,' I ventured. 'You can't change the past.''Can't change the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!"

"A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars."

"Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."

"The value of time is immeasurable."

"Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever."

"Worrying about what happened on Monday, or, what might happen on Wednesday, is at the expense of one's Tuesday."
Explore more quotes by Ian Hamilton Finlay


"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."


"Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different."


"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."


"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."


"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."


"What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever."


"But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything."


"As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes."


"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."
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