Tree Quotations

• “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”Anonymous
• “Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment.”Rene Dubos
• “We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”Aldo Leopold
• “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”John Muir
• “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”Albert Camus
• “My heart is glad, my heart is highWith sudden ecstasy;I have given back, before I die,Some thanks for every lovely treeThat dead men grew for me.”V.H. Friedlaender
• “October's poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter."”Nova Bair
• “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of a garden.”Thomas Jefferson
• “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”Albert Einstein
• “If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches on the same tree.”W. B. Yeats
• “...every year one day comes, when, although there is no obvious change in the appearance of trees and hedges, the Earth seems to breathe and it is spring.”Elizabeth Clarke, The Darkening Green
• “What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?”Pablo Neruda
• “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.”William Blake, 1799, The Letters
• “Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root.”Malay proverb
• “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.”Chinese proverb
• “I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”Willa Cather (1873-1947), O Pioneers 1913
• “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “If a tree dies, plant another in its place.”Linnaeus“A tree which has lost its head will never recover it again, and will survive only as a monument of the ignorance and folly of its Tormentor.”George William Curtis
• “In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”John Muir“A tree falls the way it leans.”Bulgarian proverb
• “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Other holidays repose on the past. Arbor Day proposes the future.”J. Sterling Morton
• “I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.”Henry David Thoreau, 1817 – 1862
• “Do not be afraid to go out on a limb...That's where the fruit is.”Anonymous
• “Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity.”Susan Fenimore Cooper
• “People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard...You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber.”Roger Swain
• “A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.”Welsh proverb
• “And see the peaceful trees extend their myriad leaves in leisured dance—they bear the weight of sky and cloud upon the fountain of their veins.”Kathleen Raine, Envoi
• “Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another.”Shirley Ann Grau
• “There is, I conceive, scarcely any tree that may not be advantageously used in the various combinations of form and color.”Gilpin
• “Alone with myselfThe trees bend to caress meThe shade hugs my heart”Candy Polgar
• “Whoever loves and understands a garden will find contentment within.”Chinese Proverb