Quotes about trees

„Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”

The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?“

—  Lewis Carroll, book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

„The proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree.“

—  John Amos Comenius Czech teacher, educator, philosopher and writer 1592 - 1670

„[On why criminals rob nice-looking houses] You come up on a house where the grass is this tall, and there's a dog chained to the clothesline, and a motor swinging in the tree, buddy, that's a house where a gun lives! And you want to find out what kind it is, just crawl through the window after dark.“

—  Jeff Foxworthy American stand-up comedian 1958

Totally Committed (1998)

„Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).“

—  Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

„Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.“

—  Molière French playwright and actor 1622 - 1673

„It is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.“

—  Friedrich Nietzsche, book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

„There's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.“

—  Bob Ross American painter, art instructor, and television host 1942 - 1995

„A tree cannot grow in its parents’ shadows.“

—  Octavia E. Butler, book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 7 (p. 82)

„Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaf and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ in the poplar trees.“

—  Billie Holiday American jazz singer and songwriter 1915 - 1959

"Strange Fruit" (1939). Though Holiday's renditions made this anti-lynching song famous, it was written by Abel Meeropol (using his pseudonym "Lewis Allen").
Misattributed

„I'm looking for the face i had before the world was made. I was the primordial flaring forth, the gravitational waves, the whirling galaxies, and the exploding supernovas that would become stars and planets. I was the steaming planet Earth, the bacteria awash in the sea, and the early eukaryotes and multicellular animals. I exploded in the Cambrian explosion, stumbled onto land, walked with dinosaurs, saw trees and flowers appear, walked upright in Africa, and walked on the moon. I felt the embrace of gravity. I was one with all that had been and all that was to be. I experienced subjective mystical communion with the evolutionary, emergent universe. I was the universe. We know not where the journey leads, nor whether a final destination is even a meaningful concept. The attraction is the inherent thrill of participating in a grand creative endeavor for which participation is its own reward“

—  Alexis Karpouzos 1967

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

„I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.“

—  Sylvia Plath, book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 7

„This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.“

—  Sylvia Plath, Ariel

"The Moon and the Yew Tree" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/yew.html
Ariel (1965)

„I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.“

—  Sylvia Plath, book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

„The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.“

—  Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932 - 1963

„No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.“

—  C.G. Jung Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology 1875 - 1961

„There are also animals which are called elks [alces "moose" in Am. Engl.; elk "wapiti"]. The shape of these, and the varied colour of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.“

—  Julius Caesar, book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book VI
De Bello Gallico
Original: (la) Sunt item, quae appellantur alces. Harum est consimilis capris figura et varietas pellium, sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt mutilaeque sunt cornibus et crura sine nodis articulisque habent neque quietis causa procumbunt neque, si quo adflictae casu conciderunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus: ad eas se applicant atque ita paulum modo reclinatae quietem capiunt. Quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consuerint, omnes eo loco aut ab radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores, tantum ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverunt, infirmas arbores pondere adfligunt atque una ipsae concidunt.

„Trees and humans are in an intimate relationship. What they exhale, we inhale, what we exhale they inhale.“

—  Sadhguru Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian 1957

Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
Sourced from newspapers and magazines
Context: Trees and humans are in an intimate relationship. What they exhale, we inhale, what we exhale they inhale. This is a constant relationship that nobody can afford to break or live without. -Sadhguru (on Project GreenHands mass tree planting initiative)

„I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.“

—  Pablo Neruda, book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.
"Every Day You Play" (Juegas Todos las Días), XIV, p. 35.
Variant: I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)

„And before the stars were born.
The greatest gift you can offer anyone is their complete freedom.
Freedom to love, to laugh, to cry, to feel scared, angry, insecure, full of doubt or full of joy.
To hold them in that safe and sacred space.
You don't exist to make anyone else happy.
But you can be present.
Present to their unhappiness, their excitement.
Present to the life that moves in them.
And you can invite them to a deeper Happiness.
The Happiness of Being itself.
The Happiness that holds them exactly as they are.
The way you hold them now.
The way the ground holds the flowers, the trees, the great mountain ranges.
The way you were held as a little one.
And before the stars were born.“

—  Джефф Фостер American basketball player 1977