“Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."”
56 Phocion
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
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Plutarch 251
ancient Greek historian and philosopher 46–127Related quotes

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

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95ecdfa2-4be8-11de-b827-00144feabdc0.html

Galen, on Diogenes's views on the ignorant rich, in Exhortation to Study the Arts, Wakefield (1796), p. 217; cf. Stobaeus, iv. 31b. 48.
Latter day attributions

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 74-75

Letter to William Hayley (1803-10-07)
1810s

Section 6 : Higher Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.
It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.