Quotes about trees
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“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act I, scene i.
Manfred (1817)

Life, Truth, Knowledge

“a wind has blown the rain away & the sky away & all the leaves away, & the trees stand. i think i, too, have known autumn too long.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Beauty, Autumn, Thinking

“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.”

Elizabeth David (1913–1992) British cookery writer

Source: An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Pleasure, Sun

“Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know.
-Songs of Sapphique”

Catherine Fisher book Incarceron

Source: Incarceron

Thinking

“It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Beauty

“That word is 'willing.' It's an attitude and spirit of cooperation that should permeate our conversations. It's like a palm tree by the ocean that endures the greatest winds because it knows how to gracefully bend.”

Stephen Kendrick book The Love Dare

Source: The Love Dare

“A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Nature, Time

“The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Spring

“To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Etymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard’s workshop—is to love it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Love, Learning

“What's the matter?'' She immediately started laughin. ''What's the mattter? Everything is the matter! Rocks! Trees! Atoms! Even anteaters! Everything is the matter!”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“The wood nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

George Berkeley (1685–1753) Anglo-Irish philosopher

“Yeah, you're sitting in a tree because you're. That's easy to see. I can't believe this is, destroyer of despots, warrior hottie, leader of the flock! All you need now to make yourself more pathetic is a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

“At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“The only way a no-legged leopard could hurt you is if it fell out of a tree onto your head.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: My Point... And I Do Have One

Way, Hurt

“Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Sleep and Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/126/31.html", st. 5 <br class="br">Poems (1817) <br class="br">Source: The Complete Poems

Life, Way

“I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.”

Isabel Allende book Portrait in Sepia

Source: Portrait in Sepia

Truth, Beauty, Autumn, Reality

“And here I am, strapped into a tree, a stone's throw from the biggest idiot in the games.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Game

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

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Life, World, Heart

“Princes don't come around everyday, and happy endings don't grow on trees”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Happiness

“If you become a bird and fly away from me, I will be a tree that you come home to.”

Margaret Wise Brown The Runaway Bunny

Source: The Runaway Bunny

Home, Bird, Flying

“The apple… came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at least three years because that's how long it takes for a new tree to bear fruit.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

“I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Winter

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Imagination, Nature, Painting

“Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.”

Carl Hiaasen book Chomp

Source: Chomp

Dead

“And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Smile, Learning, Distant

“The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Bird

“You look like a boy who has eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge and doesn't like the taste.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Warrior Heir

Boy, Knowledge

“It felt bizarre to be ignored in general, much less by an embodiment of Aidan--who used to stare at her so hard that he'd run into trees.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“The more you move, the stronger you'll grow, not like a tree that can be killed if you uproot it.”

Ha Jin (1956) Chinese-American novelist, short story writer and poet

“… the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

World

“The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Renascence and Other Poems

Sadness

“Then why are you here?” Emma demanded. “Oh, is this one of those missed-connections things? We met the other night, you felt a spark? Sorry, but I don’t date trees.”

“I am not a tree.” Iarlath looked angry, his bark peeling slightly.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Night

“When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth, and tell the whole world 'No, You Move.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

Truth, World

“You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney

Source: Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

Star, Universe

“Aphrodite,” [Annabeth] said.
“Venus?” Hazel asked in amazement.
“Mom,” Piper said with no enthusiasm.
“Girls!” The goddess spread her arms like she wanted a group hug.
The three demigods did not oblige. Hazel backed into a palmetto tree.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Girl, Moms

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

People, Feeling, Imagination

“… along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

World, Dreams, Imagination, Animals

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

“All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country… and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Housing, Country

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

People, World, Kiss, Nature

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Source: Journal of Katherine Mansfield

Light, Dead

“The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 1. <br class="br"> I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804) <br class="br">Source: I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud

Dance

“The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Love, World, Perfection, Night

“I just listened to the music, and breathed in the day, and remembered things. Things like walking around the neighborhood and looking at the houses and the lawns and the colorful trees and having that be enough.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Music, Color, Housing

“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Beauty, Peaceful, Strong

“… you look like you fell out of a crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

Way

“Oh, yeah, insanity ran deep in the roots of that family tree.’ (Talon)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Family

“Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Kiss

“The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Feeling, Grass, Cry

“You can't see the forest for the trees.”

Nicholas Sparks book At First Sight

Source: At First Sight

“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.”

Flannery O’Connor book The Complete Stories

Source: The Complete Stories

“The goldenrod is yellow,
The corn is turning brown…
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.”

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) Novelist, poet, writer, activist

“Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”

Flannery O’Connor book Wise Blood

Source: Wise Blood

Water

“♪Kyo-kun and Tohru sitting in a tree… K-I-S…♪

- Shigure Sohma”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 1

“Valentine Weather

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.”

Edwin Morgan (1920–2010) Scottish poet and translator

Source: A Book of Lives

Hell, Kiss, Weather

“It’s the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Painting, Forgetting

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Imagination, Star

“How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leave them, for without his absence they cannot develop themselves. Plants always remain small under a big tree.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Men, Training

“In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Beauty, Beauty, Way, Nature

“My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Context: My favorite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.