Quotes about trees (1852 quotes, page 18)

“I ask myself: "What is that tree?" It is everything. It is God's voice, when the winds are abroad. It is God's thought, when in the deep stillness of the noon it is silent. It is the house which God has built for a thousand birds. It is a harbour of comfort to weary men and to the cattle of the field. It is that which has in it the record of ages. There it has stood for a century. The winter could not kill it, and the summer could not destroy it. It is full of beauty and strength. It has in it all these things ; and as different men look at it, each looks at so much of it as he needs ; but it takes ten men to see everything that there is in that tree — and they all do not half see it.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

The Nature, Importance and Liberties of Belief (1873)
Context: I look at a large tree on the lawn, and say to my neighbour: "What is that tree to you?" He looks at it, and says: "Well, I think that would cut about twenty cords of wood. You could work in a good many branches, and as the price of wood is in the market, I think I could make fifty dollars out of that tree easily, and perhaps more than that." His answer shows what the tree is to him — and it is that." I call up a boy, and say to him: "What do you think of when you look at that tree?" "Ah!" he says, "there will be a bushel of hickory-nuts on that tree, anyhow; and he begins to think how he will climb it, and shake them down, and what he will do with them. That is what the tree says to him. I say to another person: "What is that tree to you?" He says: "I would not take fifty dollars for it. Under it my cows stand in summer. The shade of that tree has stood me instead of a shed ever since I owned this farm. That tree is worth its weight in gold." He values it for its economic uses. I ask a painter: "What is that tree to you?" At once he says: "Do you see what an exquisite form it has? How picturesque it is? If you were to take it and put it in the foreground of the landscape that I am working on, what a magnificent effect you would get!" It has an aesthetic value to him. I ask another man: "What is it to you?" He goes into an explanation of its structure and qualities. He is a botanist, and he has his peculiar view of it. I ask myself: "What is that tree?" It is everything. It is God's voice, when the winds are abroad. It is God's thought, when in the deep stillness of the noon it is silent. It is the house which God has built for a thousand birds. It is a harbour of comfort to weary men and to the cattle of the field. It is that which has in it the record of ages. There it has stood for a century. The winter could not kill it, and the summer could not destroy it. It is full of beauty and strength. It has in it all these things; and as different men look at it, each looks at so much of it as he needs; but it takes ten men to see everything that there is in that tree — and they all do not half see it.
So it is with truths. Men sort them. They bring different faculties to bear in considering them. One person has philosophical reason; another has factual reason. One man brings one part of his mind to it; another brings to it another part of his mind. The truth is larger than any one man's thought of it. The truth of God usually has relations that stretch out in such a way that men may see it very differently, and all of them be true in spots, although they do not have the whole truth.

Men , God , Age , Beauty

“Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.

Age

“Here sits the Unicorn;
Leashed by a chain of gold
To the pomengranate tree.
So light a chain to hold
So fierce a beast;”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

The Unicorn in Captivity (1955)
Context: Here sits the Unicorn;
Leashed by a chain of gold
To the pomengranate tree.
So light a chain to hold
So fierce a beast;
Delicate as a cross at rest
On a maiden's breast.
He could snap the golden chain
With one toss of his mane,
If he chose to move,
If he chose to prove
His liberty.
But he does not choose
What choice would lose.
He stays, the Unicorn,
In captivity.

Light

“This means, in popular imagination, that bread and clothes shall grow, ready-made, on trees. Do you have more winged ideals?”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Advice to the Estranged. S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 348.
Context: A Jew waits for Messiah to come and redeem the world from fear and pain, from the cataclysmic conflicts between rich and poor. All shall enjoy the earth. This means, in popular imagination, that bread and clothes shall grow, ready-made, on trees. Do you have more winged ideals?

Imagination , Clothes

“The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)
Context: I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.

People , Pleasure , Nature , Water

“If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Money , Nature , Bird

“What came first, the fruit-tree or the stone?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: Consciousness presupposes itself, and asking about its origin is an idle and just as sophistical a question as that old one, "What came first, the fruit-tree or the stone? Wasn't there a stone out of which came the first fruit-tree? Wasn't there a fruit-tree from which came the first stone? Journals and Papers, Hannay, 1996 1843 IVA49

“The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air.”

Clifford D. Simak book Cemetery World

Cemetery World (1973)
Context: The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air. It was time, I knew, to be getting back to camp. But I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.

Sun

“Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

A response to the Nazi book burnings, in "To Posterity" (1939) as translated by H. R. Hays (1947)
Context: Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!

Age , Silence

“He is a fool who looks at the fruit of lofty trees, but does not measure their height.”
Stultus est qui fructus magnarum arborum spectat, altitudinem non metitur.

Quintus Curtius Rufus Roman historian

VII, 8.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book VII

Fools

“Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy, on hill and valley, and bright, dancing water.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 193
Context: Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one, it is all beauty and gladness; the waves of ocean roll in light, and the mountains are covered with day. Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy, on hill and valley, and bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully gazes at the same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly aspect. The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar of the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music of the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness, the cheerful light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The great train of the seasons passes before him like a funeral procession; and he sighs, and turns impatiently away. The eye makes that which it looks upon; the ear makes its own melodies and discords: the world without reflects the world within.

Life , Flowers , Water , Joy

“The trees in sunny neighborhoods”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter X "Highland and Lowland Fir" Sec. 1
Context: Trees which grow in places facing the course of the sun are not of porous fiber but are solid, being drained by the dryness... The trees in sunny neighborhoods, therefore, being solidified by the compact texture of their fiber, and not being porous from moisture, are very useful, so far as durability goes, when they are hewn into timber. The lowland firs, being conveyed from sunny places, are better than those highland firs, which are brought here from shady places.

“Heaven and Earth exist for ever:
Mountains and rivers never change.
But herbs and trees in perpetual rotation
Are renovated and withered by the dews and frosts:
And Man the wise, Man the divine—
Shall he alone escape this law?
Fortuitously appearing for a moment in the World
He suddenly departs, never to return.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Substance speaks to Shadow" (translation by A. Waley)
In A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), 'Poems By Tao Ch'ien', p. 106
Context: Heaven and Earth exist for ever:
Mountains and rivers never change.
But herbs and trees in perpetual rotation
Are renovated and withered by the dews and frosts:
And Man the wise, Man the divine—
Shall he alone escape this law?
Fortuitously appearing for a moment in the World
He suddenly departs, never to return.
How can he know that the friends he has left
Are missing him and thinking of him?
Only the things that he used remain;
They look upon them and their tears flow.
Me no magical arts can save,
Though you may hope for a wizard's aid.
I beg you listen to this advice—
When you can get wine, be sure to drink it.

World , Law , Mountain , Appearance

“Mix a rose madder with white, let us say, and you get a pink, quite different from the original madder, and the result is a surface color instead of a transparent one, a color you look on instead of into. One does not paint long out of doors before it becomes apparent that a green tree has a lot of red in it. You may not see the red because your eye is blinded by the strong green, but it is there never the less. So if you mix a red with the green you get a sort of mud, each color killing the other. But by the other method. when the green is dry and a rose madder glazed over it you are apt to get what is wanted, and have a richness and glow of one color shining through the other, not to be had by mixing.”

Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) American painter and illustrator

Letter to F.W Weber (1950); as quoted in Maxfield Parrish by Coy Ludwig (1997)
Context: It is generally admitted that the most beautiful qualities of a color are in its transparent state, applied over a white ground with the light shining through the color. A modern Kodachrome is a delight when held up to the light with color luminous like stained glass. So many ask what is meant by transparent color, as though it were some special make. Most all color an artist uses is transparent: only a few are opaque, such as vermillion, cerulean blue, emerald green, the ochres and most yellows, etc. Colors are applied just as they come from the tube, the original purity and quality is never lost: a purple is pure rose madder glowing through a glaze of pure blue over glaze, or vice versa, the quality of each is never vitiated by mixing them together. Mix a rose madder with white, let us say, and you get a pink, quite different from the original madder, and the result is a surface color instead of a transparent one, a color you look on instead of into. One does not paint long out of doors before it becomes apparent that a green tree has a lot of red in it. You may not see the red because your eye is blinded by the strong green, but it is there never the less. So if you mix a red with the green you get a sort of mud, each color killing the other. But by the other method. when the green is dry and a rose madder glazed over it you are apt to get what is wanted, and have a richness and glow of one color shining through the other, not to be had by mixing. Imagine a Rembrandt if his magic browns were mixed together instead of glazed. The result would be a kind of chocolate. Then too, by this method of keeping colors by themselves some can be used which are taboo in mixtures.

Color , Strong , Painting

“Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of The Tree of Life (2 June 2011) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. … I don't know when a film has connected more immediately with my own personal experience. In uncanny ways, the central events of The Tree of Life reflect a time and place I lived in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick's gift, it would look so much like this. … There is a father who maintains discipline and a mother who exudes forgiveness, and long summer days of play and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the meaning of things. … The film's portrait of everyday life, inspired by Malick's memories of his hometown of Waco, Texas, is bounded by two immensities, one of space and time, and the other of spirituality. The Tree of Life has awe-inspiring visuals suggesting the birth and expansion of the universe, the appearance of life on a microscopic level and the evolution of species. This process leads to the present moment, and to all of us. We were created in the Big Bang and over untold millions of years, molecules formed themselves into, well, you and me.
And what comes after? In whispered words near the beginning, "nature" and "grace" are heard. … The film's coda provides a vision of an afterlife, a desolate landscape on which quiet people solemnly recognize and greet one another, and all is understood in the fullness of time.

Life

“He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Birth" (1947), trans. Peter Dale Scott
Daylight (1953)
Context: He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds
And will grow slowly
Upward in a gray column
Thinking with its roots
Of the silver of underworld kingdoms.

Bird , Time

“A scientific institution, be it a laboratory or an academy, has to be grown with great care like a tree. Its growth in terms of quality and achievement can only be accelerated to a very limited extent.”

Homi J. Bhabha (1909–1966) 1909-1966, Indian nuclear physicist

On the creation of research institutions, in a speech to the Indian National Science Academy (1963), as quoted in the "Homi Jehangir Bhabha" profile at the Vigyan Prasar Science Portal
Context: I feel that we in India are apt to believe that good scientific institutions can be established by Government decree or order. A scientific institution, be it a laboratory or an academy, has to be grown with great care like a tree. Its growth in terms of quality and achievement can only be accelerated to a very limited extent. This is a field in which a large number of mediocre or second rate workers cannot make up for a few outstanding ones, and the few outstanding ones always take at least 10-15 years to grow.
Too many of our National Laboratories have been established by deciding upon the field in which it was desired to work and by drawing up an organisational chart on the pattern of some corresponding large laboratory abroad. It was then assumed naively, that the posts in the chart could be filled by advertisement, forgetting that workers of the appropriate and high level either do not exist in India, or can only be obtained at the cost of some other institution, which thus becomes weaker of it. Our Universities, weak as they always were, have been further weakened in this matter.

“The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt
Context: Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting off fresh forms and shapes as it burns; it is a tree, growing very slowly — you can watch it long and see no movement — very silently, unnoticed. It was planted in the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant. And men guarded it and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth. In the hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden and knocked, begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners. And their young companions without called to them to come back, and play the man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips, and take their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled brows, at weaklings' work. And the passers by mocked them and called shame, and others cried out to stone them. And still they stayed there laboring, that the tree might grow a little, and they died and were forgotten.
And the tree grew fair and strong. The storms of ignorance passed over it, and harmed it not. The fierce fires of superstition soared around it; but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, and the tree grew. With the sweat of their brow have men nourished its green leaves. Their tears have moistened the earth about it. With their blood they have watered its roots.
The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But they are all part of the one tree — the tree that was planted on the first birthday of the human race. The stem that bears them springs from the gnarled old trunk that was green and soft when white-haired Time was a little child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots that twine and twist about the bones of the ages that are dead.

Light , Season

“All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Introduction to Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead (1970) by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada; this paraphrases some statements from An Autobiography of a Yogi (1948) by Paramahansa Yogananda
Context: From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality.

Religion

“Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them imported and grown. Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)
Context: Everywhere within Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi's domain, and among the people beyond the borders, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras, the Keralaputras, as far as Tamraparni and where the Greek king Antiochos rules, and among the kings who are neighbours of Antiochos, everywhere has Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, made provision for two types of medical treatment: medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals. Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them imported and grown. Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals.

Animals

“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

Fear

“In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 3
Context: In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it.... Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness.

Heart

“The tree looks like a dog, barking at heaven.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Book of Haikus (2003)

Dogs

“We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.”

Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) Israeli politician, statesman and general

Excerpts of PM Rabin Knesset Speech (21 September 1993) https://web.archive.org/web/20040825072435/http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Speeches/EXCERPTS%20OF%20PM%20RABIN%20KNESSET%20SPEECH%20-DOP-%20-%2021-Sep
Context: We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians. We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.

Love , Men , People , Peace

“Walk with humility in the landscape. To be some natural thing — an ancient tree — no thinking — not to think is central to the activity.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Notebooks
Context: What trace of the creature subsists in the work. It is a way of staying alone, passing the time subjected to the object — silent, still. Walk with humility in the landscape. To be some natural thing — an ancient tree — no thinking — not to think is central to the activity.

Nature , Thinking

“You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed. A few less of some shapes, and it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, heather or moss. A little more of some other shapes and it might have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in its shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, an ape or a man.

Chance

“Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected—and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo—the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 60

Death , Universe

“Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?

Death , World , Lying

“Sometimes I think I would love to see … just to see the beauty of flowers and trees and birds and the earth and grass. … Being as I've never seen, I don't know what it's like to see. So in a sense I'm complete.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

As quoted in Stevie Wonder (1978) by Constanze Elsner, and Jet Vol. 53, No. 22 (16 February 1978), p. 60
1970s
Context: Sometimes I think I would love to see … just to see the beauty of flowers and trees and birds and the earth and grass. … Being as I've never seen, I don't know what it's like to see. So in a sense I'm complete. Maybe I'd be incomplete if I did see. Maybe I'd see some things that I didn't want to see... the beauty of the earth compared to the destruction of man. You see, it's one thing when you are blind from birth, and you don't know what it's like to see, anyway, so it is just like seeing. The sensation of seeing is not one that I have and not one that I worry about.

Love , Beauty , Flowers , Bird

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.”

Roy L. Smith

Christmas , Heart , Christmas

“Understeer is when you see the tree you are hitting, if you only hear the tree then it was oversteer.”

Walter Röhrl (1947) rally driver, winner of the 1980 and 1982 World Rally Championship for Drivers

“Tree always in the center
Of all that surrounds it
Tree feasting upon
Heaven's great dome”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

“Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever
beneath the dry earth.
Andalusia has
long, red-colored roads.
Córdoba, green olive trees
for placing a hundred crosses
to remember them.
Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Color , Lovers

“I had felt with the might of my fast circulating blood that my death would not rob this tree of its irradiant beauty, it would only rob the world of my gaze.”

Jorge Semprún (1923–2011) Spanish writer

Death , World , Beauty

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree. ”

Рой Смит (1930–1998)

Christmas , Heart , Christmas

“Plant trees you know you'll never sit in the shade of.”

Марк Фишбах (Markiplier) (1989)

“Imagine if trees gave off wifi signals, we would be planting so many trees and we’d probably save the Planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.”

Ralph Smart

Bad luck , Imagination

“Begum Sahib, the elder daughter of Shah Jahan was very handsome... Rumour has it that his attachement reached a point which it is difficult to believe, the justification of which he rested on the decision of the Mullas, or doctors of their law. According to them it would have been unjust to deny the king the privilege of gathering fruit from the tree he himself had planted.”

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Daughters , Law , Decision

“The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation. ... To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics. ... There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

Time , History , Reading , Country

“Women are stripped to the skin in the presence of leering, white-skinned, black-hearted brutes and lashed into insensibility and strangled to death from the limbs of trees. A girl child of fifteen years was lynched recently by these brutal bullies. Where has justice fled? The eloquence of Wendell Phillips is silent now. John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave. But will his spirit lie there moldering, too? Brutes, inhuman monsters—you heartless brutes—you whom nature forms by molding you in it, deceive not yourselves by thinking that another John Brown will not arise.”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

"Southern Lynching" (April 1892)

Justice , Girl , Heart , Nature

“My Friends! Happiness lies in serving the salvation of Humanity. Put aside all prejudices and, summoning your spiritual forces, aid mankind. Direct the unsightly towards the path of beauty. As the tree renews its leaves, so shall humanity flourish on the path of righteousness.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

94
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)

Beauty , Happiness

“Friends, this body is so impermanent, fragile, unworthy of confidence, and feeble. It is so insubstantial, perishable, short-lived, painful, filled with diseases, and subject to changes. Thus, my friends, as this body is only a vessel of many sicknesses, wise men do not rely on it. This body is like a ball of foam, unable to bear any pressure. It is like a water bubble, not remaining very long. It is like a mirage, born from the appetites of the passions. It is like the trunk of the plantain tree, having no core. Alas! This body is like a machine, a nexus of bones and tendons. It is like a magical illusion, consisting of falsifications. It is like a dream, being an unreal vision. It is like a reflection, being the image of former actions. It is like an echo, being dependent on conditioning. It is like a cloud, being characterized by turbulence and dissolution. It is like a flash of lightning, being unstable, and decaying every moment. The body is ownerless, being the product of a variety of conditions.”

Vimalakirti

Chapter 2 http://www.fodian.net/world/0475_02.html
Vimalakirti Sutra, Robert Thurman's translation, 1991

Confidence , Pain , Dependency , Dreams

“Traumas, or very powerful, primal experiences, especially when they’re experienced by large numbers of people, have a tendency to affect everything they touch. At that border, it wasn’t just one person who died. It was many, untold numbers—mouths full of earth. I think when you have a massive collective experience like that, the trauma remains in the earth. I think the earth has a memory, trees have a memory, rivers have a memory. If we’re a little bit open to it, we pick it up…”

Kapka Kassabova (1973) author

On land holding the ghosts of trauma in “Mouths Full of Earth: An Interview with Kapka Kassabova” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/12/mouths-full-of-earth-an-interview-with-kapka-kassabova/ in The Paris Review (2017 Sep 12)

Personality , People , Thinking , Memory

“For socialists, of course, Mussolini’s apostasy proves nothing except his supreme evil. For everyone else, though, Mussolini’s origin story puts his subsequent career in a whole new light. Outsiders can easily see what insiders deny: The apostate fruit rarely falls far from the orthodox tree.”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

The Pageant of World History vs. Wikipedia: The Case of Mussolini https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/06/the_whitewash_o.html (Jun 20, 2012)

Light , Evil

“To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & and a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers..”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1790s, Letter to Revd. Dr. Trusler (1799)

Money , Imagination , Sun , Beauty

“Your highness is forgetting that I see as clearly in your heart what is going on now as I saw your carriage coming from the Carmelite convent, traversing the town and stopping under the trees fifty paces off from my house.”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

Forgetting , Housing , Heart

“When men were scattered over the earth, protected by eaves or by the dug-out shelter of a cliff or by the trunk of a hollow tree, it was philosophy that taught them to build houses.”

Posidonius (-135–-51 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, Epistle XC (trans. R. M. Gummere)

Housing , Men

“We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this spot. On the other attempt, the state troopers had ridden into the crowd with clubs, and bullwhips, and tear gas. We paused there a moment, just to remember, and then we moved out on the highway. It was a divided highway, and the North side was reserved for us. Every few yards a soldier stood with a rifle and bayonet. Army cars drove ahead of us and behind us. In the air five helicopters circled endlessly, occasionally swooping down just above a clump of trees or bushes. Radios and walkie-talkies crackled orders back and forth. State troopers drove by in squad cars, two to a car. One drove, and the other quite ostentatiously took pictures of the marches. This is an Alabama form of intimidation. I kept remembering that these were the same state troopers who had two weeks earlier had ridden mercilessly into a defenseless mass of people! I marveled again at the power of the federal government whose presence stood between us and another massacre.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Brotherhood Postponed (1965)

Cars , People , Tear

“There is nothing so beautiful as the free forest. To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make a fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air, is the greatest of all luxuries. I would not stay a week pent up in cities, if it were not for my passion for art.”

Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) American sculptor

On nature in “Edmonia Lewis https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Beauty , Art , Passion , Fish

“Wind will not cease even if trees want to rest.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

“The king seizes the Brahmanas, pollutes their caste and even takes their lives. If a conch-shell is heard to blow in any house, its owner is made to forfeit his wealth, caste and even life. The king plunders the houses of those who wear sacred threads on the shoulder and put scared marks on the forehead, and then binds them. He breaks the temples and uproots tulsi plants… The bathing in Ganga is prohibited and hundreds of scared asvattha and jack trees have been cut down.”

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) Indian saint

Jayananda: Chaitanya-mañgala, (a biography of the great Vaishnava saint), about the Navadvipa region on the eve of the saint’s birth in 1484 AD. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

Life , Wealth , Housing

“Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A. M. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak’s thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

The Pale King (2011)

Time , Business , Past , Grass

“What harm have the trees done them?”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

he said. “Must they punish the grass for their own faults? Men are savages, who would set a land afire because they have a quarrel with other men.”
Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 9, "Orm Embar" (Arren)

“Quote, the viability of a postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner’s dilemma. Money is a symptom of poverty and inefficiency. Unquote.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Money , Optimism , Quotes

“You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: How I Grew (1987), Ch. 1

Friendship , History , Marriage , Age

“In their phenomena of life the inhabitants of the earth display endless variety. They swim in the waters, soar in the skies, squeeze among the rocks, clamber among the trees, scamper over the plains, and glide among the grounds and grasses. Some are born for a summer, some for a century, and some flutter their little lives out in a day. They are black, white, blue, golden, all the colours of the spectrum. Some are wise and some are simple; some are large and some are microscopic; some live in castles and some in bluebells; some roam over continents and seas, and some doze their little day-dream away on a single dancing leaf. But they are all the children of a commion mother and the co-tenants of a common world. Why they are here in this world rather than some place else; why the world in which they find themselves is so full of the undesirable; and whether it would not have been better if the ball on which they ride and riot had been in the beginning sterilised, are problems too deep and baffling for the most of them. But since they are here, and since they are too proud or too superstitious to die, and are surrounded by such cold and wolfish immensities, what would seem more proper than for them to be kind to each other, and helpful, and dwell together as loving and forbearing members of One Great Family?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Conclusion", pp. 324–325
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

Family , Sea , Making love , Dreams

“I have seen a mother mouse in a moment of peril flee from her home among the falling pieces of a cord-wood pile, and disappear under the roots of a neighbouring oak. I have seen her a little later, recovered from her initial dismay, making her way back again, clambering along among the tangled timbers, stopping now and then to look and listen, her eyes wild and anxious, and her whole little body quaking with excitement. I have seen her go among the ruins of her dwelling, take a poor little squeaking young one in her mouth, and hurry away with it to the gloomy refuge in the roots of the oak. I have watched her return again and again, each time taking in her careful teeth the tiny body of a babe, until five mouthfuls of precious pink were safely lodged within the fortress of the oak. And I could as soon believe that woman, when she saves her children from some fearful harm, is a soulless machine as think that that brave little woodmother, out there alone under the trees, snatching her darlings from the jaws of death, was a heroine without sense or feeling.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Common-Sense View", pp. 184–185
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Psychical Kinship

Home , Time , Making love , Children

“The Universal Kinship means the kinship of all the inhabitants of the planet Earth. Whether they came into existence among the waters or among desert sands, in a hole in the earth, in the hollow of a tree, or in a palace; whether they build nests or empires; whether they swim, fly, crawl, or ambulate; and whether they realise it or not, they are all related, physically, mentally, morally—this is the thesis of this book. But since man is the most gifted and influential of animals, and since his relationship with other animals is more important and more reluctantly recognised than any other, the chief purpose of these pages is to prove and interpret the kinship, of the human species with the other species of animals.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

The Universal Kinship (1906), Preface

Universe , Animals , Water , Books

“Each of us is descended from poetry ancestors. It’s the same for any art, any occupation. There is a lineage of style, knowledge and culture passed from generation to generation, one artist to another. Ultimately all poetry is related in the family tree of poetry…”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer

On her poetic lineage in “An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJP5naHW5QIV0Rx9Ch0tGgkkEAAYASAAEgIJD_D_BwE in Poets.org (2019 Mar 31)

Family , Art , Knowledge , Relation ships

“In my opinion, they are not examples of real conversion. If a person through fear, compulsion, starvation or for material gain or consideration goes over to another faith, it is a misnomer to call it conversion. Most cases of mass conversion, of which we have heard so much during the past two years, have been to my mind false coin… I would, therefore, unhesitatingly re-admit to the Hindu fold all such repentants without much ado, certainly without any shuddhi… And as I believe in the equality of all the great religions of the earth, I regard no man as polluted because he has forsaken the branch on which he was sitting and gone over to another of the same tree. If he comes to the original branch, he deserves to be welcomed and not told that he had committed sin by reason of his having forsaken the family to which he belonged. In so far as he may be deemed to have erred, he has sufficiently purged himself of it when he repents of the error and retraces his step.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works Volume 66, New Delhi, 1976, pp. 163-64. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

Family , Religion , Faith , Past

“A tree or a mineral or a man is a combination of elements or parts, and each must have its projected life term. If we violently and prematurely cut them off one from the other, certain consequences must ensue. Each constituent requires its own time for dissolution. And suicide being a violent destruction of the first element - body - the other two, of soul and spirit, are left without their natural instrument. The man then is but half dead, and is compelled by the law of his own being to wait until the natural term is reached.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Suicide Is Not Death The Lamp, September 1894

Life , Soul , Time , Waiting

“It was one of those winter days in Los Angeles when the wind has swept away the smog and the air is clear and the light still and everything has the immediacy of a dream. I parked on a street called Overland in the Hollywood Hills. It was lined with white-skinned birch trees. Their nude branches shimmered against the sky. Tattered yellow leaves clogged the gutters and the air was scented with the rainy smell of eucalyptus. There were no cars on the street and the houses were barely visible behind walls and fences and sweeping lawns that had never been trod upon except by gardeners.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Goldenboy (1988), p.132

Housing , Light , Dreams , Angels

“I have given detailed instructions for the establishment of silk industry in Mysore. Silk worms and men well versed in the art of rearing them have already arrived from foreign lands to train our people. Eighteen centres have been set up for development of the industry. Many more are needed. Every encouragement is being given to plantation of mulberry trees. I would like you to take direct interest in this developmental activity. My goal is clear: I want Mysore to be the foremost amongst silk producing nations.”

Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) Ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore

Tipu Sultan's address on 1788, Quoted in The Sword of Tipu Sultan, by Bhagwan S Gidwani https://books.google.com.sa/books?id=EimPBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT262#v=onepage&q&f=true
From Tipu Sultan's Decrees

People , Art , Training , Men

“If along the path of truth, success (which was often near-failure unnoticed) is subjected to the same scrutiny and desire for improvement as failure, we may find ourselves in closer proximity to trees.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

[Hans Reichenbach, The rise of scientific philosophy, University of California Press, 1951, 0520010558, 326]

Truth , Failure , Success

“In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: For The Sake of Heaven (1945), p. 95

God

“When we read Spinoza, we are seized with a feeling like that of seeing nature at its grandest in most vigorous repose: a forest of thoughts, tall as the sky, whose blooming tree-tops sway back and forth, while imperturbable trunks stand rooted in the eternal soil. There is a certain soft breeze in the writings of Spinoza which is inexplicable. It stirs the reader with the winds of the future. The spirit of the Hebrew prophets still rested perhaps on their late descendant. At the same time, there is a seriousness to him, a self-confident pride, a grandeur of thought which also seems to be an inheritance, since Spinoza belonged to one of those families of martyrs which had been expelled from Spain by those most Catholic kings.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Heinrich Heine, On the History of Philosophy and Religion and Other Writings [original in German]
G - L

Family , Confidence , Time , Reading

“In general, the books of RV level I (RV 4-6) are thoroughly South Asian and have reference to local climate, trees and animals. We therefore have to take them seriously at their word, and cannot claim that they belong just to Afghanistan.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

WITZEL 2000: The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000. (WITZEL 2000a:§13). Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Animals , Books

“Work democracy cannot be imposed on people as a political system. It depends on the consciousness on the part of the working people in all professions of their responsibility for the social process. This consciousness may be present or it may grow in an organic manner, like a tree or an animal organism. The growth of this consciousness of social responsibility is the most important prerequisite for the prevention of the cancer-like growth of political systems in the social organism. If they are allowed to grow, they will sooner or later bring about social chaos. Furthermore, such consciousness of responsibility alone will, in the course of time, bring the institutions of human society into harmony with the natural functions of work democracy. Political systems come and go without stopping or fundamentally changing the social process. But the pulse of human society would stop and not return should the natural life functions of love, work and knowledge cease for only one day.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

Democracy , Time , Dependency , People

“He excels in description of forests and the hermitages of sages. Nature, in all its aspects and varieties — trees, mountains, rivers, clouds, dawn, sunset, had a great fascination for him. His sketches of some of the sages have a deft touch and they dwell on the greatness of penance and the sublimity of a spiritual life of self-realisation.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Source: The Epic Civilization, p. 51.

Mountain , Nature , Self-confidence , Life

“Tulsidas is the highest tree in the garden of Hindu poetry, though his name does not appear in Aeen-i-Akbari or any book of Muslim historians or even narratives of European writers who worked on information taken from Persian historians. Yet, Tuslidas was the greatest man of India of his time. In fact he can be called greater than Akbar because the victory that the poet registered in the hearts of thousands of millions of people was greater and more lasting than all the imperious victories put together…the Ramacharritamanas is such an enormous epic that its English adaptation by Growse is of 362 pages. The declinations in this epic are so similar to Christianity that on numerous spots, if Rama is replaced by Christ, there can be no question.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Vincent Smith in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", pp.34-35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas

Time , Question , Victory , People

“The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation…. To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics….. There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

Time , History , Reading , Light

“As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

George Bernard Shaw Selected Prose (1952) p. 521.

Help , Parting

“Lennox is beyond doubt the greatest heavyweight of all-time. He is not second any more, he is there at the top of the tree. It reminded me of a young George Foreman and an elusive Muhammad Ali - everything you want in a fighter.”

Lennox Lewis (1965) British-Canadian boxer

George Foreman, 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/specials/lewis_v_tyson_fight/2036717.stm

Time

“They are not like the – patron’s hands or the – blessing hands of the curate – They resemble their tools, mountains, tree trunks... The time is approaching when machines will – work FOR them – Then he will have hands like his boss – WHY NOT?”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

He's on the way – HIS LIFE begins TODAY [written text in his painting 'Les mains – hommage a Majakovski', 1951 - [ Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian Futurist poet].
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's
Source: Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 68

Mountain , Time

“The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich variety of the world.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Boulding (1958) "Evidences for an Administrative Science: A review of the Administrative Science Quarterly, volumes 1 and 2". In Administrative Science Quarterly. vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 14
1950s

Thinking , Sense , World , Science

“The howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning that will be found later white plumage huddled on telegraph wires in back gardens or fowl roosting in apple trees, the eternal sorrow that never sleeps of great Mexico.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. I (p. 35)

Sleep , Dogs , Night

“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!”

Matthew Arnold Thyrsis

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.
St. 18
Thyrsis (1866)

“Please respect our need to grieve privately. My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up with the best memories of him.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

[Michelle Williams: Heath Ledger Has Broken My Heart, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, The Daily Telegraph, Web, news.com.au, February 1, 2008, 2008-02-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20080206234312/http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, 2008-02-06]</ref>
[Michelle Williams Breaks Silence on Heath's Death, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20175486,00.html, People, Web, people.com (Time Inc.), February 1, 2008, 2008-02-02]

Family , Time , Girl , Beauty

“I love this country. I actually love this state. This feels good being back in Michigan. Um, you know the trees are the right height.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

The, uh, the streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.
[2012-02-24, Mitt, Michigan and a Couple of Cadillacs, Charles M., Blow, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/opinion/blow-mitt-romney-michigan-and-a-couple-of-cadillacs.html, 2012-07-03]
2012

Country , Love , Making love , Feeling

“Never have I met another man of such singleness of mind in his devotion to nature as Muir. He lived and moved and had his being as a devotee. … Of himself he took little heed, but no zealous missionary ever went abroad to spread the gospel with his fervor in communicating a love of nature. And with him a love of nature meant an understanding of her laws. He sauntered over the mountains, claiming kinship with the rocks and growing things and gathering them all to his heart. He has told me that he found it necessary, in getting people to listen, to tell them stories such as his immortal tale of Stickeen, but the real hope in his heart was to awaken their interest so they would want to go to nature themselves and to delve into the mysteries of her ways. … Every tree and flower, every bird and stone was to him the outward token of an invisible world in process of making.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Charles Keeler (pages 17-18)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Law , Understanding , Mountain , People

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

Singing , God , Beauty , Fools

“We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings — many of them not so much.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" A Wind Storm in the Forests of the Yuba http://books.google.com/books?id=zj2gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55", Scribner's Monthly, volume XVII, number 1 (November 1878) pages 55-59 (at page 59); modified slightly and reprinted in The Mountains of California http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_mountains_of_california/ (1894), chapter 10: A Wind-Storm in the Forests
1890s, The Mountains of California (1894)

Sense , Way , Travel , Making love

“In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Sun , Beauty , Nature , Thinking

“On a tree by a river a little tomtit
Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow"
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'.
"Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried,
"Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?"”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
The Suicide's Grave (from The Mikado).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Singing , Bird

“Birds' songs express joy, beauty, and purity, and evoke in us vitality and love. So many beings in the universe love us unconditionally. The trees, the water, and the air don't ask anything of us; they just love us. Even though we need this kind of love, we continue to destroy them. By destroying the animals, the air, and the trees, we are destroying ourselves.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), p. 131

Beauty , Universe , Animals , Bird

“And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Sea , Time , Dreams , Heart

“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Forgiveness , Courage , History , Knowledge

“O custodians of civilization, may we ask how long
Will you perpetrate horror, commit wrong on wrong?
Conceded that you want to test the sharpness of your swords,
But how long will you try them on our pliant throats?
You want to see the assembly with rhetoric hot ablaze,
How long can our sighs and wails satisfy your craze?
True that the tales of woe titillate your heart,
But how long can we relate the tales of grief and loss?
We know that you grudge the drought caused by the heavens high,
How long can our tears of blood your withering crops revive>
You require glimmering stars to brighten up your fate,
How far can these grains of dust emblazon your face?
Knowing we are faded leaves of a fallen tree,
How long will you continue to crush us out complete?”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 101
Poetry, custodians of civilization

Loss , Fate , Star , Heart

“The relationships between mother, father and children, family trees and genealogies, preferential treatment of relatives and alliances through marriage furnish us with some of the few really good and useful comparative concepts we have in anthropology. They exist everywhere in one form or another, and they differ in interesting ways. If the ultimate goal is to discover the unity of humanity through its manifold appearances, the profession cannot afford to let go of the still rich gold mine of kinship.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 6 : Kinship

Family , Marriage , Children , Appearance

“...I can savor a work, but it is difficult for me to judge it independently from the author, and I would gladly say, as is the tree, so is the fruit.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Original: (fr) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit.

“The seed of God is in us, Meister Eckhart said. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into G o d .”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eleven, Spiritual Adventure: Connection to the Source

God

“Ask the world to reveal its quietude —
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Given (2005), Sabbaths 2001

World , Silence

“Attend me. How do you prove that there are eggs in a bird’s nest? Don’t strain your gray matter: go climb the tree and find out. There is no other way.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Time for the Stars

Source: Time for the Stars (1956), Chapter 8, “Relativity” (p. 82)

Way , Bird

“Life on Earth is dependent on nature to survive.
Ecological balance comes naturally.
Planting trees and flowers can maintain a good environment.
Reproduction of saplings can benefit the earth.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 萬物依存大自然，平衡動態順其緣。
栽花植樹維佳境，繁殖新生種福田。

"Reproduction" (繁殖新生)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 87.

Dependency , Nature , Flowers , Life