Virginia Woolf quote: “And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”

“All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree — not of a cloud.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume V, Preface (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

“America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be.”

Richard McKenna book The Sand Pebbles

Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 5; speech of Lt. Collins, the commander of the San Pablo to his crew at the start of summer cruising on the Yangtze River
Context: "Tomorrow we begin our summer cruising to show the flag on Tungting lake and the Hunan rivers," he said. "At home in America, when today reaches them, it will be Flag Day. They will gather to do honor and hear speeches. For us who wear the uniform, every day is Flag Day. We pay our honor in act and feeling and we have little need of words. But on this one day it will not hurt us to grasp briefly in words the meaning of our flag. That is what I want to talk about this morning.
"Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America really is," Lt. Collins said, nodding for emphasis. "It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be. We in San Pablo are collectively only a tiny, momentary bit of that structure. How can we, standing here, grasp the whole of America?" He made a grasping motion. "Think now of a great cable," he said, and made a circle with his arms. "The cable has no natural limiting length. It can be spun out forever. We can unlay it into ropes, and the ropes, into strands, and the strands into yarns, and none of them have any natural ending. But now let us pull a yarn apart into single fibers —" he made plucking motions with his fingers " — and each man of us can find himself. Each fiber is a tiny, flat, yellowish thing, a foot or a yard long by nature. One American life from birth to death is like a single fiber. Each one is spun into the yarn of a family and the strand of a home town and the rope of a home state. The states are spun into the great, unending, unbreakable cable that is America."
His voice deepened on the last words. He paused, to let them think about it....
"No man, not even President Coolidge, can experience the whole of America directly," Lt. Collins resumed. "We can only feel it when the strain comes on, the terrible strain of hauling our history into a stormy future. Then the cable springs taut and vibrant. It thins and groans as the water squeezes out and all the fibers press each to each in iron hardness. Even then, we know only the fibers that press against us. But there is another way to know America."
He paused for a deep breath. The ranks were very quiet.
"We can know America through our flag which is its symbol," he said quietly. "In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment....
"Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth," Lt. Collins was saying. "It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible."

“No system can ever relieve us of our personal responsibility, and it is essential that we all recognise the need to change the way we live.”

Shaun Chamberlin

What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (2012) https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745332857/what-we-are-fighting-for/

“We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.”

Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer

World Theater Day Message, Geneva, Switzerland (2009)

“If we live a life full of regret, full of things we haven't done, if we've lived an unfulfilled life, when death comes along, it's a lot worse. I think it's true for all of us.”

Irvin D. Yalom (1931) American psychotherapist and writer

How to Die, The Atlantic, October 2017 Issue https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/how-to-die/537906/

“We are the Roots of the tree on which you flourish. Go on rejoicing in your beauty! But remember there is this difference between us that with every autumn the old Leaves die, and with every spring new Leaves are born; but if the Roots once perish neither you nor the tree can live at all.”

Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) Russian writer

An argosy of fables, "The Leaves and the Roots" p. 398
The Fables (1883)

“Why do I live in Israel? Because Israel lives in me, as it lives in all Jews. It is who we are. And those of us lucky enough to recognize this truth and embrace it in all its fullness and depth are the luckiest Jews in the world.”

Caroline Glick (1969) deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post

[Bitton-Jackson, Livia, Caroline B. Glick: Woman of Valor - A Shackled Warrior, http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/38244, The Jewish Press, February 18, 2009]
Written in the award booklet for the Guardian of Zion Award presentation at Bar Ilan University (May 31, 2009)