“I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit; you know this is as well as anyone.”

— Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Preface
What is Property? (1840)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 3, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroy…" by Pierre Joseph Proudhon?

Pierre Joseph Proudhon 40

French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and so… 1809–1865

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Frankenstein, trying to explain to his fiancee why he experiments the way he does
Frankenstein (1931)

“The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?”

Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914) American writer

"Night Winds".
Verses (1915)

“But trust me when I say that memories are funny things. Sometimes they're real, but other times they change into what we want them to be… But like I said, she's hurting, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people in pain don't always see things as clearly as they should… And if it somehow doesn't work out between you, then you've got to understand that you can't look back anymore. It'll destroy you in the end, and destroy her as well. Neither one of you can keep living with regret, because it drains the life right out of you, and the very idea is enough to break my heart.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Tuck Hostetler, Chapter 15, p. 218-219
2009, The Best of Me (2011)

“If you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as one.”

Benny Wenda (1975) West Papuan activist

As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/why-we-are-losing-a-world-of-languages

“No one should need to be big enough to destroy others and all of us must have to be powerful and resourceful enough to protect ourselves.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9672842-no-one-should-need-to-be-big-enough-to-destroy

“(…) one should not have hatred towards anyone; one should try not to let down other people; one should try to help others; one should try to love all.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981
Humanity

“I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.... youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

quote in Berthe's notebook, after the death of her husband Eugène Manet, 1892; cited in Berthe Morisot, ed. Delafond and Genet-Bondeville, 1997, p. 70
1881 - 1895