TREES QUOTES
quotations about trees
Great trees give more shade than fruit.
GERMAN PROVERB
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Questions of Travel
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
The best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago. The next best time is this weekend.
DENNY MCKEOWN
"The best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago", Cincinnati, April 18, 2017
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor
There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, July 25, 1924
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
JOYCE KILMER
"Trees"
When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.
JODI THOMAS
Welcome to Harmony
Every three years, the surgeons come to our street and operate on the plane trees.... The trees they leave behind give a good impression of the aftermath of Passchendaele or the Somme, their complicated foliage reduced to the skeleton of a trunk and a few leafless branches.
IAN JACK
"We hardly notice them. But street trees are monuments to city life", The Guardian, May 13, 2017
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
HERMANN HESSE
Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
WILLA CATHER
O Pioneers
Those are the best trees that combine use with ornament.
JOHN EVELYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Humble country pleasures will enliven the monotony of my future. It shall be my ambition to enlarge the oasis round my house, and to give it the lordly shade of fine trees. My turf, though Provencal, shall be always green.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
HERMANN HESSE
Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte
Trees receive a most beautiful burial. Nature takes fallen trees gently to her bosom -- at rest from storms. They seem to have been called home out of the sky to sleep now.
JOHN MUIR
John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.
CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS
The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die
Trees shade us, but they know it not.
BEN JONSON
Timber: Or, Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter
A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Game of Thrones
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
No enemy here shall he see,
But winter and rough weather.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
Nothing very remarkable is to be found in the way of street trees in London, the everlasting plane having been used almost to the exclusion of every other species.
ANGUS DUNCAN WEBSTER
London Trees