Quotable quotes

Thought-provoking snippets from the OED quotation files:

Self-defeating as a gardening strategy, surely

1931 Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette 19 April, I give you the real feature of a rockery. It is better than any other kind of a garden because you always have plenty of rocks to throw at cows and horses and dogs and children and other garden enemies.

More bad behaviour in the garden

1988 Practical Gardening May, Osteospermums..provide constant, cool colour but some have appalling habits and none of them open in dull weather.

Here, however, is virtue (and ambition) rewarded

1880 Times 23 Sept., Mr. Richard Dean's ‘Vicar of Laleham’, clad in pontifical purple, earned the prize for the best dish of any coloured round potato.