“Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
-- The Trees (1978)”

“562. When the tree is fallen all goe with their hatchet.”

“You must remember that an oak tree is not a crime against the acorn.”

“The axe is laid to the root of the tree. … I will hew it down. And as I live, I will plague your Honor, Pomp, Greatness, Superfluity, and confound it into parity, equality, community.”

“When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.”

“Nothing is less promising than precociousness; the young thistle looks much more like a future tree than the young oak.”

“You woke up on the wrong side of the oak tree, didn’t you? (Acheron)”

“Under oak, ash and thorn
My soul was born.
Under thorn, oak and ash
My body bent to the lash.
Under ash, thorn and oak
My heart broke.
Under oak, ash and thorn all three
I was nailed to a tree.”

“Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”

“Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.”