"The trees are God's great alphabet:
With them He writes in shining greenAcross the world His thoughts serene."
-Leonora Speyer.
"I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!"
-John Muir.
"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."
-Willa Cather, 1913.
"For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."
-Martin Luther.
"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
-William Shakespeare.
"The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert.
Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?
-Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
-Robert Louis Stevenson.
He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
-Lucy Larcom, "Plant a Tree".
Plants a hope.
-Lucy Larcom, "Plant a Tree".
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
-George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903.
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
-Kahlil Gibran.
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
-Kahlil Gibran.
Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good.
-Sara Ebenreck, American Forests
The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.
-Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938.
Breeze is the conductor, trees the musicians, leaves the instruments.
-Nathaniel LeTonnerre.
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," 1914. (<Almost makes me want for faith.)
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," 1914. (<Almost makes me want for faith.)
Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series, 1844.
We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.
-Author Unknown.
