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Literary notes about garden (AI summary)

The word "garden" in literature often transcends its literal meaning to evoke a space of cultivation, refuge, and transformation. In Voltaire’s Candide [1], for example, the garden becomes a metaphor for self-improvement and responsible stewardship, while in Dickens’s works [2, 3] it frequently denotes a threshold between the public world and a more intimate, controlled private realm. In contrast, for writers like Frances Hodgson Burnett [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], the garden is a mysterious, even enchanted space that harbors secrets and potential for personal rebirth. Authors such as Edgar Allan Poe [11, 12] and Victor Hugo [13, 14, 15, 16, 17] use the garden not only as a vivid setting for beauty and art but also as a symbol of decay and neglected promise. Beyond these physical spaces, the garden sometimes takes on an idealized, almost philosophical dimension, as seen in Santayana’s portrayal [18] where it represents a fertile ground for ideals and creative impulse. Overall, whether as sanctuary, social arena, or symbol of moral and personal cultivation, the garden remains a versatile and powerful literary trope.
  1. "All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden."
    — from Candide by Voltaire
  2. The ladies were at the garden gate, waiting for their arrival and their breakfast.
    — from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  3. ‘Cook,’ said the lady abbess, who took care to be on the top stair, the very last of the group—‘cook, why don’t you go a little way into the garden?’
    — from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  4. "In the garden!"
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  5. “In the garden!”
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  6. In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden.
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  7. “When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator proceeded.
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  8. He had gone away and the secret garden was empty—except for the robin who had just flown across the wall and sat on a standard rose-bush watching her.
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  9. “It’s in the garden no one can go into,” she said to herself.
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  10. How real that dream had been—how wonderful and clear the voice which called back to him, "In the garden—In the garden!"
    — from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  11. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene, adds to it a great beauty.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
  12. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
  13. At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a sacred spot.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  14. He walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  15. She saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  16. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the white wall which enclosed it.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  17. When he saw that this wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden and allowed it to run to waste.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  18. Nature is a perfect garden of ideals, and passion is the perpetual and fertile soil for poetry, myth, and speculation.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

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