Quotes about wood
page 4

Abbie Hoffman photo
Edward Lear photo

“On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,—
One old jug without a handle,—
These were all his worldly goods.”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

St. 1.
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bongy-Bò http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/ybb.html (1877)

Henry Van Dyke photo
Helen Keller photo
Nick Cave photo
Pentti Linkola photo
Paul Gauguin photo

“I have lingered among the nymphs of Corot, dancing in the sacred wood of Ville-d'Avray.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

quote in a letter - late in Gauguin's life, from the Marquesas-Islands; as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 185
1890s - 1910s

Cat Stevens photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“Wherever you go in the world, it’s always nice to feel like you’re supposed to be there. Whether in a city or the woods, West or East, we all have someplace to be. You’ll know it when you arrive.”

John M. Rodgers (1928–2012) American politician

“ Two Homes, a World Apart http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/opinion/two-homes-a-world-apart.html.” The New York Times. 30 May 2012.

Willem Roelofs photo

“.. it is a masterpiece [painting of Barend Cornelis Koekkoek: 'View on the Woods' 1839, with sizes 176 x 160 cm], a well-executed brave undertaking to imagine something like that on a large scale with such an elaborateness. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..het is een meesterstuk [groot schilderij van : 'Boschgezicht' 1839, 176 x 160 cm], een welgelukte stoute onderneming om op die schaal met die uitvoerigheid zooiets voor te stellen.
In a letter to his parents, August 1840; as cited by Marjan van Heteren in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum, - ISBN13 * 978 90 6868 4322, 2006, p. 23
1840' + 1850's

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

in a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
1905 - 1915

Giraut de Bornelh photo

“Fair friend, in singing I call you:
Sleep no longer, for I hear the bird sing
Who goes seeking day through the wood
And I fear that the jealous one will attack you,
And soon it will be dawn!”

Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer

Bel companho, en chantan vos apel!
No dormatz plus, qu'eu auch chantar l'auzel
Que vai queren lo jorn per lo boschatge
Et ai paor que.l gilos vos assatge
Et ades sera l'alba.
"Reis glorios", line 11; translation from Gale Sigal Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages (1996) p. 148.

Karel Appel photo
Tommy Franks photo

“Another hallway led to a green steel door. "This is the execution chamber," the officer said. "The day of the execution, we take the man through this door." He opened the green door, and we blinked at the bright lights inside. A big chair filled the room. I could smell leather. "All right, boys," he said. "Line up." The kids made a straight line that led out the green door, then moved ahead, one at a time, to sit in the big wooden chair. "This is the electric chair, Tommy Ray," my dad explained. "It's where murderers are executed." The boys inched forward. Some sat longer in the chair than others. Executed meant killed, that much I knew. "This is the ultimate consequence for the ultimate act of evil," my father told the troop. When all the boys had sat in the chair, it was my turn. I reached up and felt the smooth wood, the leather straps with cold metal buckles. There was a black steel cap dangling up there like a lamp without a bulb. "Up you go, Tommy Ray," Dad said, hoisting me into the chair. The boys were staring at me. But I wasn't even a little bit afraid. My father stood right beside me. I could feel his warm hand next to the cool metal buckle. As the school bus rumbled out of the prison parking lot that afternoon, I stared back at the high walls. I had learned another important lesson. A consequence was what followed what you did. If you did good things, you'd be rewarded with further good things. If you broke the law, you'd have to pay the price. I have never forgotten that lesson.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 8

John Fante photo
Marisa Miller photo

“I’d say I was a tomboy… I took wood chop in high school and I was very into volleyball and football, and [was] very unaware of anything girly for a long time.”

Marisa Miller (1978) American model

[13 Questions With Marisa Miller, http://www.askmen.com/celebs/interview_200/233_marisa_miller_interview.html, AskMen.com, News Corporation, 2010-04-13]

Conrad Aiken photo
William Morley Punshon photo
John Muir photo
John Milton photo

“O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Sonnet, To the Nightingale (c. 1637)

Émile Gallé photo

“Our roots are in the depths of the woods-on the banks of streams and among the mosses.”

Émile Gallé (1846–1904) French glass artist and cabinetmaker

Motto on Galle's studio doors (Musée de l'École de Nancy).

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Snow-Storm http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/snow_storm.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι έννοια), as material modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the physical or physiological; these we still see practiced side by side. According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view it is the surging upward of the heartblood and the warm element in man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger; just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Vol 2 1837 translated by ES Haldane and Francis H. Simson first translated 1894 p. 181
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 2

Thomas Campbell photo

“A stoic of the woods—a man without a tear.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part I, stanza 23 (1809)
Gertrude of Wyoming (1809)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" In the Valley of the Elwy http://www.bartleby.com/122/16.html", lines 9-10
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Stephen King photo
Wang Wei photo

“Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking;
late sunlight enters the deep wood,
shining over the green moss again.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Deer Fence" (鹿柴), trans. Burton Watson
Variant translations:
No one is seen in deserted hills,
Only the echoes of speech is heard.
Sunlight cast back comes deep in the woods,
And shines once again upon the green moss.
Translated by Stephen Owen
On the empty mountain, seeing no one,
Only hearing the echoes of someone's voice;
Returning light enters the deep forest,
Again shining upon the green moss.
Translated by Richard W. Bodman and Victor H. Mair

Ulysses S. Grant photo
John Muir photo

“Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

August 1875, page 220
John of the Mountains, 1938

Francesco Petrarca photo

“Cities are hateful to me, friendly the woods.”

Le città son nemiche, amici i boschi.
Canzone 237, st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

George Washington Plunkitt photo
William Wordsworth photo
Stedman Graham photo

“I can't believe that a coloured girl from the back woods of Mississippi has done all that you have done”

Stedman Graham (1951) American businessman

Oprah Winfrey Surprise Spectacular

El Lissitsky photo
Walter Scott photo
Clement of Alexandria photo

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

William Allingham photo

“Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

Autumnal Sonnet; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

William Cullen Bryant photo

“Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Third of November, 1861. Thirty Poems. Appleton, New York. pp. 112-115. (1864)

John Dryden photo

“My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life:
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley, and a lofty wood.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Georgic II, lines 688–691.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

Haruki Murakami photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Chris Cornell photo
Theodore Kaczynski photo
Jeannette Piccard photo

“If we do not add something to the knowledge of cosmic rays by our trip to the stratosphere this summer, we had better not go. We had better stay on the ground, be hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

Jeannette Piccard (1895–1981) American balloonist, scientist, teacher and priest

Quoted in [Oakes, Claudia M., United States Women in Aviation: 1930-1939, Smithsonian Studies in Air and Space, 1985, http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/AirSpace/text/SSAS-0006.txt]

Kent Hovind photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
John Dolmayan photo
Joseph Strutt photo

“A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 250
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Sylvia Plath photo

“Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes travelling
Off from the centre like horses.”

"Words" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/words.html
Ariel (1965)

John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

The Chapel of the Hermits; comparable to Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book vii

Emil Nolde photo

“In the working of wood and for the determining of its character I had had enough experience in my five-year pursuit of woodcutting. I also always gladly let the various charming grainings and sometimes the knots become involved in the printing.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

in Nolde's letter, c. 1910; in Alois J. Schardt, 'Nolde als Graphiker', Das Kunstblatt 11, no. 8., 1927, p. 289; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 52
1900 - 1920

Chris Cornell photo
William James photo

“How you produce volume after volume the way you do is more than I can conceive. …But you haven't to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts as I do. It is like walking through the densest brush wood.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Letter to Henry James (ca. 1890) as quoted by Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2007) p. 297. Also as quoted partially by Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925) p. 2.
1890s

Xun Zi photo
Amir Khusrow photo
Nico Perrone photo
Chesty Puller photo

“Those days in the woods saved my life many a time in combat.”

Chesty Puller (1898–1971) United States Marine Corps general

Recalling his early days trapping muskrats before school to supplement his mother's income
The Savage Wars of Peace, Max Boot, 2002.

Haruki Murakami photo
Phillip Guston photo
Natalie Merchant photo
Dave Barry photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Robert Frost photo

“The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Out, Out — http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/out-out-2/"
1910s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“In a valley sweet with singing
From the hill and from the wood,
Where the green moss rills were springing,
A wondrous maiden stood.
The first lark seemed to carry
Her coming through the air;
Not long she wont to tarry,
Though she wandered none knew where.”

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

The London Literary Gazette (10th January 1835) Versions from the German (Second Series.) 'The Coming of Spring'—Schiller.
Translations, From the German

Richard Francis Burton photo

“Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!… the Devil drives'.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Burton to Lord Houghton as quoted in The Devil Drives: A life of Sir Richard Burton (1984) by Fawn Brodie.

Alexander Graham Bell photo

“Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will find something you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore around it, and before you know it, you will have something to think about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the result of thought.”

Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone

Engraving at Bell Labs as quoted in Comprehending and Decoding the Cosmos: Discovering Solutions to Over a Dozen Cosmic Mysteries by Jerome Drexler (2006). p. viii.
Disputed

Hilary of Poitiers photo
Susan Cain photo

“Embracing their quiet nature does not cause introverts to flee to a shack in the woods. It empowers them to engage with the world – but on their own terms.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Cain's second TED Talk, "Announcing the Quiet Revolution," March 2014.

Olaudah Equiano photo
Thomas Gray photo

“One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree:
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 28
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Statius photo

“Whence first arose among unhappy mortals throughout the world that sickly craving for the future? Sent by heaven, wouldst thou call it? Or is it we ourselves, a race insatiable, never content to abide on knowledge gained, that search out the day of our birth and the scene of our life's ending, what the kindly Father of the gods is thinking, or iron-hearted Clotho? Hence comes it that entrails occupy us, and the airy speech of birds, and the moon's numbered seeds, and Thessalia's horrid rites. But that earlier golden age of our forefathers, and the races born of rock or oak were not thus minded; their only passion was to gain the mastery of the woods and the soil by might of hand; it was forbidden to man to know what to-morrow's day would bring. We, a depraved and pitiable crowd, probe deep the counsels of the gods.”
Unde iste per orbem primus venturi miseris animantibus aeger crevit amor? divumne feras hoc munus, an ipsi, gens avida et parto non umquam stare quieti, eruimus quae prima dies, ubi terminus aevi, quid bonus ille deum genitor, quid ferrea Clotho cogitet? hinc fibrae et volucrum per nubila sermo astrorumque vices numerataque semita lunae Thessalicumque nefas. at non prior aureus ille sanguis avum scopulisque satae vel robore gentes mentibus his usae; silvas amor unus humumque edomuisse manu; quid crastina volveret aetas scire nefas homini. nos, pravum et flebile vulgus, scrutati penitus superos.

Source: Thebaid, Book III, Line 551 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Richard Hovey photo
Steve Jobs photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
James Frazer photo
John Crowe Ransom photo
Harper Lee photo
Shashi Tharoor photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Tertullian photo
Henry Van Dyke photo

“Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Toiling of Felix, Pt. I, prelude (1900)