“The axe is laid to the root of the tree. … I will hew it down. And as I live, I will plague your Honor, Pomp, Greatness, Superfluity, and confound it into parity, equality, community.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.”

“Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
-- The Trees (1978)”

“Pestis eram vivus… moriens tua mors ero - "Living, I was your plague… dying, I shall be your death.”

“… I believe it to be a duty of the General Convention of Harrisburg, not only to support the wool growers and wool manufacturers, but to lay the root at the axe of the tree, by declaring the system of Adam Smith to be erroneous – by declaring war against it on the part of the American System – …”

“So if you are the big tree, we are the small axe. Ready to cut you down, to cut you down.”

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

“From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”

“Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”