The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“The fruit of the tree of knowledge, always drives man from some paradise or other.”
"The Idea of Progress" http://books.google.com/books?id=TbgYAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+fruit+of+the+tree+of+knowledge+always+drives+man+from+some+paradise+or+other%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage, Romanes Lecture (27 May 1920), reprinted in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922)
Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters
“Spying a young plane tree with long stem and countless branches and summit aspiring to heaven.”
Primaevam visu platanum, cui longa propago
innumeraeque manus et iturus in aethera vertex.
iii, line 39 (tr. J. H. Mozley)
Silvae, Book II
Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903
" Sonnet. To Science http://library.thinkquest.org/11840/Poe/science.html", l. 12-14 (1829).
would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?.
Sec. 341
The Gay Science (1882)
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 148, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'
Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)
Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 6, Chapter 4, verse 6, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/6/4/6
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science
Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq2aN9tYE by Penny Daniels (1989)
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Abhijñānaśākuntalam (The Sign of Shakuntala)
Sir Jadunath Sarkar Shivaji and His Times, 1919, p. 406
Bk. III, Ch. 1
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)
1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
On First Principles, Bk. 4, ch. 2, par 16
On First Principles
Quoted in C.R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Composed Chiefly of His Letters (1843) (Phaidon, London, 1951) p. 273
posthumous, undated
“Directly the mulberry tree begins to make you circle, break off. Pelt the tree with laughter.”
Source: Three Guineas (1938), Ch. 2, p. 80
“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
"Trees" - This poem was first published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 2 (August 1913). The first two lines were first written down on the 2nd of February 1913.
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Context: 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.
"Moral Decay" (1937); Later published in Out of My Later Years (1950)
1930s
Context: All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force.
The essential unity of ecclesiastical and secular institutions was lost during the 19th century, to the point of senseless hostility. Yet there was never any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed.
St. 6
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succor, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.
If he goes out in to the street after a rainstorm and sees a worm which has strayed there, he reflects that it will certainly dry up in the sunshine, if it does not quickly regain the damp soil into which it can creep, and so he helps it back from the deadly paving stones into the lush grass. Should he pass by an insect which has fallen into a pool, he spares the time to reach it a leaf or stalk on which it may clamber and save itself.
“At the center of this sacred hoop, you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.”
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother — and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen. At the center of this sacred hoop, you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather — with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: The slaughter accomplished by man is so small a thing of itself in the carnage of the universe! The animals devour each other. The peaceful plants, the silent trees, are ferocious beasts one to another. The serenity of the forests is only a commonplace of easy rhetoric for the literary men who only know Nature through their books!... In the forest hard by, a few yards away from the house, there were frightful struggles always toward. The murderous beeches flung themselves upon the pines with their lovely pinkish stems, hemmed in their slenderness with antique columns, and stifled them. They rushed down upon the oaks and smashed them, and made themselves crutches of them. The beeches were like Briareus with his hundred arms, ten trees in one tree! They dealt death all about them. And when, failing foes, they came together, they became entangled, piercing, cleaving, twining round each other like antediluvian monsters. Lower down, in the forest, the acacias had left the outskirts and plunged into the thick of it and, attacked the pinewoods, strangling and tearing up the roots of their foes, poisoning them with their secretions. It was a struggle to the death in which the victors at once took possession of the room and the spoils of the vanquished. Then the smaller monsters would finish the work of the great. Fungi, growing between the roots, would suck at the sick tree, and gradually empty it of its vitality. Black ants would grind exceeding small the rotting wood. Millions of invisible insects were gnawing, boring, reducing to dust what had once been life.... And the silence of the struggle!... Oh! the peace of Nature, the tragic mask that covers the sorrowful and cruel face of Life!
"The Island", in Bulletin of the Garden Club of America (1929), p. 1, also in Collected Poems (1934), p. 54
Source: The Waves (1931), pp. 39-40
Context: Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.
Book X : The Pope.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Context: What wonder if the novel claim had clashed
With old requirement, seemed to supersede
Too much the customary law? But, brave,
Thou at first prompting of what I call God,
And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,
Accept the obligation laid on thee,
Mother elect, to save the unborn child,
As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living: — didst resist —
Anticipate the office that is mine —
And with his own sword stay the upraised arm,
The endeavour of the wicked, and defend
Him who, — again in my default, — was there
For visible providence: one less true than thou
To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right,
Approved less far in all docility
To all instruction, — how had such an one
Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?"
Down By The Salley Gardens http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1476/
Crossways (1889)
Context: p>Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.</p
The Art of Persuasion
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother — and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen. At the center of this sacred hoop, you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather — with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!
“The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, 'What a dust do I raise!”
The Fly on the Wheel.
“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.”
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.
Book VI
De Bello Gallico
In Is the Qur'an God's Word? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RuQMD4yYWg
Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 15
Address to the Greeks
Preface
What is Property? (1840)
And never under any circumstances, to squelch it, or sneer at it, or imply that it is childish, or unmanly, or untrue.
"Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" https://books.google.com/books?id=ksOjjuy3issC&pg=PA44, in The Language of the Night (1979), p. 44
1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
“How the fuck you feed a tree?…What…you put a ham sandwich on the tree?”
The Osbournes television show
Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)
Original: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/859221-the-media-only-writes-about-the-sinners-and-the-scandals
A Birthday http://www.poetry-online.org/rossetti_christina_a_birthday.htm, st. 1 (1861).
Source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Source: Mockingjay
“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”
Variant: I speak for the trees!
Source: The Lorax
" The Yellowstone National Park http://books.google.com/books?id=smQCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA509", The Atlantic Monthly, volume LXXXI, number 486 (April 1898) pages 509-522 (at pages 515-516); modified slightly and reprinted in Our National Parks http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/ (1901), chapter 2: The Yellowstone National Park
1900s, Our National Parks (1901)
Source: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), ch. 1
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
“What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree…”
Source: The Witch of Blackbird Pond
“Compared with me, a tree is immortal.”
Source: Meditations in an Emergency
“Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
“A lion chased me up a tree, and I greatly enjoyed the view from the top.”
“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Statement of January 1991, as quoted in Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett (2007) by Andrew Kilpatrick
Source: The Dream of a Common Language
“No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.”
Source: 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
“Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.”
Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You
Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Variant: Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.
Source: Timeline
“I was walking through the leaves Falling from the trees.
Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees.”
Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi
Source: Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living
Source: Fugitive Pieces
Source: Green Dolphin Street
