“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!”

—  Joseph Campbell

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!" by Joseph Campbell?
Joseph Campbell photo
Joseph Campbell140
American mythologist, writer and lecturer 1904–1987

Related quotes

Eve Ensler photo

“Do you say that tree isn't pretty cause it doesn't look like that tree? We're all trees. You're a tree. I'm a tree. You've got to love your body, Eve. You've got to love your tree. Love your tree. (Leah)”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: The Good Body

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Ah, Woman has no look so sweet
As that, when, half afraid to meet
The look she loves, blushes betray
All the suppressed glance would say.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(15th March 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Vandyke consulting his Mistress on a Picture in Cooke's Exhibition.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Bertolt Brecht photo

“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!

Zora Neale Hurston photo

“Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Chaim Soutine photo

“Ah, the giant that is Rembrandt; he's God, he's God!”

Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) painter

Source: Diary of an art dealer, R. Gimpel, Farrar Strauss, New York, 1966, p. 437

Thomas Merton photo

“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It “consents,” so to speak, to God's creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

New Seeds of Contemplation (1972).

Edna O'Brien photo

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

Edna O'Brien (1930) Novelist, memoirist, biographer, playwright, poet and short story writer

William Blake photo

“Art is the tree of life.
Science is the Tree of Death
Art is the Tree of Life
GOD is Jesus”

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

The Laocoön

Kent Hovind photo

“There are two ways to look at this earth. Some people look at this world and say, ‘You know it’s amazing! A ‘Big Bang’ made this from nothing!’ That’s the Humanist worldview which says, ‘Man is god.’ Other people look at the world and say, ‘You know its incredible design! There must be a smart designer.’ That’s the Creationist worldview which says, ‘God is God.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Ronald Reagan photo

“A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, as quoted in Sacramento Bee (3 March 1966)
1960s

Related topics