Branches Quotes

Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it. ~ Lord Dunsany

A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? ~ Ivan Turgenev

It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To follow the dark paths of the mind and enter the past, to visit books, to brush aside their branches and break off some fruit. ~ Virginia Woolf

Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out. ~ Eli Roth

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better. ~ Henri Matisse

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster. ~ Nick Harkaway

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

A pretty woman is a Christmas tree,' my mother told me in the airport. This fella is hanging things on my branches as his gaze sweeps from my face all the way down my body to my hips and then back to my face. Ideas fly from his widened eyes and land on me like teeny, decorative burdens. He is giving me shyness, maybe, some book smarts, and a certain yielding sweetness in bed. The oil-slick eyes get me, and I find myself hanging a few ornaments myself, giving him deft hands and a sense of humor. ~ Joshilyn Jackson

I lowered my hands to try to save from disorder the arrangement of the tleaves and flowers; meanwhile, she was also dealing with the branches, leaning forward; and so it happened that at the very moment when one of my hands slipped in confusion between Madame Miyagi's kimono and her bare skin and found itself clasping a soft and warm breast, elongated in form, one of the lady's hands, from among the branches keiyaki [translator's note: in Europe called Caucasian elm], had reached my member and was holding it in a firm, frank grasp, drawing it from my garments as if she were performing the operation of stripping away leaves. ~ Italo Calvino

One of the most important secret societies of the 20th century is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world. It is the Round Table that ultimately orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. ~ David Icke

The House is rooted in the principle of direct elections and is unique among all branches and bodies of the federal government as without exception, the people's voice. ~ Charles W. Pickering

When one has taken root, one puts out branches. ~ Jules Verne

If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.
I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.
Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question. ~ Mary Oliver

Who's this?" Dad asks when a catchy tune comes on the CD mix I made for the trip. We pass the skeleton tree that never has leaves, no matter what the time of year. Bare gray branches wave us on. "No one you know Dad," I say. It's me. ~ Cath Crowley

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government. ~ Richard M. Nixon

This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse winding through its flat meadows. Without the water the wood, on its slope and with its air of quietness and mystery and of being a world within itself, could not help being a constantly delightful thing. But water and wood, together, shading and watering and bounding each other, each give to the other something which the other does not possess, the wood giving to the stream something solid and shadowy and immemorial, the stream giving to the wood all the incomparable movement and twinkling transcience of moving water, the tree shadows standing deep in the stream, the reflection of sunlight flickering a kind of waterlight up into the shadowy branches of pine and alder. The wood and the water are here, in fact, one, for each other and with each other. It is a fusion that is almost perfect. ~ H.E. Bates

Jacob wrote that the true poet 'is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy. He comes to them and is dissatisfied. He is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees the apple trees flower in spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches ~ Jacob Grimm

Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that 'even lesbians can have babies these days.' ~ Beth Ditto

The discovery of deuterium and the marked differences in the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen and deuterium, together with an efficient method for the separation of these isotopes, have opened an interesting field of research in several of the major branches of science. ~ Harold Urey

For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

Fighting the wild branches of a haunted tree is not something that every actor is confident enough to attack, literally and figuratively. ~ Mick Garris

But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us. ~ Paulo Coelho

The main problem of service is to be the way without being "in the way." And if there are any tools, techniques and skills to be learned they are primarily to plow the field, to cut the weeds and to clip the branches, that is, to take away the obstacles for real growth and development. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I'm the Saint praying on a balcony - like peaceful beasts grazing along the Sea of Palestine.
I'm the scholar in a plain reading chair. Branches and rain beat the library windows.
I'm the pedestrian on the high road through the stunted woods; the sound of floodgates drowns out my footsteps. I stare at the melancholy wash of another golden sunset...
The path is harsh. The hillocks are weed. The air is still. How far we are from birds and streams. The end of the world must be just ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay. ~ Romain Rolland

If you want to cut down a tree, it is no use to climb into its branches. ~ Vinoba Bhave

Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing. ~ Ally Condie

As he strode through the deserted city, he thought of the New Years of his childhood, before he was ten, before the Change, when the city had still glowed with the soft, deep enchantment of sugared angels spreading their sparkling wings in bakery windows, and bells whose limpid sounds rose like the sea at a moonlit tide, and glass ornaments turning slowly this way and that on dark tree branches, gathering in their reflections the whole wondrous, promise-filled world. ~ Olga Grushin

Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage. ~ Leslye Walton

The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees. ~ Pliny The Elder

Religions are branches from a common trunk - Divine Wisdom. ~ Annie Besant

A gnarled old branch dulls the blade that severs a sapling. ~ Robert Jordan

Lord, when my spirit shall return to thee, At the foot of a friendly tree let my body be buried, That this dust may rise and rejoice among the branches. ~ Henry Van Dyke

The bird of hope sings
Perched on the branches of twilight;
Never grieve for anything
For, the day always follows the night! ~ Neelam Saxena Chandra

Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches. One day a red motor car drove past. In the backseat was
a grey gypsy dog wearing a gold earring. ~ Annie Proulx

She'd crossed her fingers for so long they had fused together like the branches of a tree. ~ Ania Ahlborn

We feel the pull of nature very strongly, relating - even unknowingly - feeling in ourselves to bulbs being stirred in frozen ground, or to the branches of dead trees. Perhaps this indivisibility from nature is an important thing to recognize as we go about our business in the world. ~ Sadie Jones

Things change when you learn to loosen your grip. I think one way and the future is desperate. I think another way everything is in sight. Trees bend so branches don't have to break. We mend the wounds of our last mistake ... I live one way holding onto the fence post. I live another way sliding off into space. Each life is loosely assembled ... Birds swim, fish do fly. Proud man begins to cry. Birds swim, fish do fly. Things change, so why can't I? ~ Tim Finn

Who can say what they'd have done in her situation. She's stronger than she knows. I tried to tell her that every day, too."
"Was that the truth?" Grant asks.
Joseph smiles. "You ever see a tree that's dying, it's nothing but a bunch of dried out branches? You can talk to this tree, tell it all about how its leaves are growing green and healthy. Then you sit back and watch how it changes. ~ Ilie Ruby

What is the shape of space? Is it flat, or is it bent? Is it nicely laid out, or is it warped and shrunken? Is it finite, or is it infinite? Which of the following does space resemble more: (a) a sheet of paper, (b) an endless desert, (c) a soap bubble, (d) a doughnut, (e) an Escher drawing, (f) an ice cream cone, (g) the branches of a tree, or (h) a human body? ~ Rudy Rucker

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

The act of the soul, in surrendering itself into the hands of Christ, forms a connecting bond between Him as the Vine and the soul as the branches, which communicates life, strength, nourishment, and beauty. In a word, with a just view of the character, and a supreme attachment to the person of Christ, the believer yields himself into His hands as a full and complete Saviour. Him he receives; upon Him he rests, and rests for time and eternity. ~ Gardiner Spring

The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect ... [for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography. ~ W. Eugene Smith

I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction. ~ Thomas Huxley

It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship. ~ Marcel Proust

When you have finished analyzing all the variations and gone along all the branches of the tree of analysis you must first of all write the move down on your score sheet, before you play it. ~ Alexander Kotov

But the greatest obstacle of all to the successful prosecution of a new branch of industry in a country, in which it was before unknown, consists ... in the bounties, premiums, and other aids which are granted, in a variety of cases, by the nations, in which the establishments to be imitated are previously introduced. ~ Alexander Hamilton

My depression had grown on me as that vine had conquered the oak; it had been a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I. It had had a life of its own that bit by bit asphyxiated all of my life out of me. At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree's high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me. ~ Andrew Solomon

The sunlight, penetrating the gaps in the tall trees, plays chess on the gravestones, shifting slowly and thoughtfully across the worn old stones. The wind, like a hundred violins, plays perpetually in the topmost branches of the deodars. ~ Ruskin Bond

To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, to admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of caterpillars. ~ Victor Hugo

The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the suppression of the liberty of the press; for it is an essential branch of liberty, so perhaps it is the best preservative of the whole. ~ John Peter Zenger

A tree has one stem but many branches, so does the human family. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body
this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine. ~ Jandy Nelson

She sat very still, listening to a stream gurgling, the breeze soughing through upper branches, the melodious kloo-klack of ravens, the nyeep-nyeep of nuthatches - all sounds chokingly beautiful. She felt she could hear the cool clean breath of growing things - fern fronds, maple leaves, white trillium petals, tree trunks, each in its rightful place. ~ Susan Vreeland

When finally the sky grew ink-black, the trees were visible only as their swaying branches blotted out the stars that crossed in blazing showers, as sometimes they do. The language of the stars, seldom read and heeded less, told beautifully and in silence of all the victories that had ever been won and all the defeats ever suffered. In uncountable lines of light across the widest sphere, the stars spoke of everything notable even down to a leaf blowing rhythmically in the wind. ~ Mark Helprin

دختر

درختي به دستانم سبز شده,
شيره بر بازوانم جوشيده,
درخت در سينه‏ام شكفته --
سر به زير,
شاخه‏ها ,چون بازوان, از درونم مي‏بالند.

درخت هستي تو ,
خزه‌اي تو ,
بنفشه‏هايي كه باد در او مي‌پيچد,
كودكي هستي بلند بالا ,
و جهان اين همه را حماقت مي‌داند
::
A Girl

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast--
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child -- so high -- you are,
And all this is folly to the world ~ Ezra Pound

The way to accomplish oneself as Guru Rinpoche Is all rooted in the Seven-Line Prayer. The seven consciousnesses of the basis,215 While on the path, become the seven branches of enlightenment.216 The result is perfected in the seven absolute treasures.217 In this way, with the sound of this vajra melody, The moment you invoke me, I, Padmasambhava, Have no choice but to come to bless you. ~ Thinley Norbu

I want to note that, historically, the make-up of the court has changed just as elected branches have change. ~ Sam Brownback

On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Kuwait is an origin, and her regulations are branches, so be devoted to the origin, the roots will be insured. ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Unless the chemist learns the language of mathematics, he will become a provincial and the higher branches of chemical work, that require reason as well as skill, will gradually pass out of his hands. ~ Alexander Crum Brown

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression - Taoism - drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight. ~ Alan W. Watts

The love of truth is the stimulus to all noble conversation. This is the root of all the charities. The tree which springs from it may have a thousand branches, but they will all bear a golden and generous fruitage. ~ Orville Dewey

Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

You don't just give the executive branch unlimited resources, unlimited power. Our founders were very concerned about too much power being invested in any one, in any branch. The balance of power is fundamental to our system. ~ Mike Huckabee

The judicial branch has, in its finest hours, stood firmly on the side of individuals against those who would trample their rights. ~ Herb Kohl

So great was the mass of information forced upon the student, that he had no time to think of the mutual implications of the various branches of his knowledge. ~ Olaf Stapledon

The do-not-call registry is still being challenged in court. Yet, the conclusions of the American people, the legislative branch, and the executive branch are beyond question. ~ George W. Bush

We are all One and Every-one is here for all. ~ Jan Jansen Easy Branches

That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I'd lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that
I didn't let it
and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

We are all born to fly. Instead, we sit on the branches afraid of the leap into the unknown. But the unknown is where enlightenment lives. Our true nature is the unknown. ~ Enza Vita

When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear. ~ Peter L. Berger

Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood. ~ P.R. Newton

Risk assessment is the new religion, the Big Babies'equivalent of the apotropaic ritual, the haruspices, the chicken entrails and the goat on the altar. Where our ancestors looked up at the stars, and spoke with the gods, and went off upon the great and dangerous adventures which would return them to their communities as adults, we, adorned not with swords and quivers but with all the tentative apparatus of our intelligence and our carefulness, look upwards and see, not gods, but improperly secured overhead lighting, untrimmed branches, loose cables, inadequately fastened false ceiling partitions; and we decide not, after all, to go. It is, after all, too dangerous. ~ Michael Bywater

I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village. ~ Shirley Jackson

I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology. ~ Thomas Nagel

Cultivate the root; the leaves and branches will take care of themselves. ~ Confucius

In the small seeds of plants lie hidden both bulk and branches, bud and fruit. In a few principles lie hidden all comfortable conclusions of holy truth. All these glorious fireworks of zeal and holiness in the saints had their beginning from a few sparks. ~ Richard Sibbes

It seemed as if the longer she lived, the more was taken from her. Not gradually, as old age fell into the inevitable, but lobbed off in great chunks, the healthy branches sacrificed along with the frail. ~ Shelley Noble

In the center of a garden reared a tree, glinting golden in the darkness, peppered with flowers that smelled of blood. The great yawning hollows of the trunk invited her in, promising a snug sanctuary. "They will suffocate you like a pillow of sand and you will never emerge alive," a chittering voice cried out. The patterns engraved on the tree's bark dizzied her eyes. "If your finger brushes against them, you'll know true madness." She glanced away from the bark, her eyes caught by a movement in the branches. A squirrel scurried down the trunk towards her. It didn't seem to be bothered that its tail was swathed in flames, or that something had eaten away at half of its rot-black face and torso. Death's pet project bared its teeth at her. "Do you really want to be here? ~ Angela Panayotopulos

A single slim trunk
Branches that bow in a storm
Green, leathery leaves with a soft centre
Glittering against blue sky
White bark scarred, bleeding
Heart wide-open
Bandaged, but upright she stands... (225) ~ Fadia Faqir

There was still a bit of sunshine in the sky, not that it mattered. High treetops and reaching branches entombed us from above in a dark coffin. It was still in the afternoon. We had time to gather things together for camp, but the choked rays that permeated the living casket were sputtering their last bits of life.

- Tyrus Savage narration from ORRLETH, Volume One of the Orrleth Young Adult Fantasy Paranormal Series ~ Thomas McClellan

In this also we are men, that we think of the dead. Once it was not so, and when one of us died, he lay where he lay by the cave-mouth and we ran in and out there, not standing quite upright as we ran. Now we stand upright, and now also we think of the dead.

So, when the comrade lies there, we do not let him lie where he died. And we do not take him by the legs carelessly, and drag him into the forest for the foxes and woodrats to gnaw on. We do not cast him into the river carelessly for the stream to float him away.

No, but rather we lay him where the ground is hollowed out a little and there cover him with leaves and branches. So he shall return to the earth, whence all things came.

Or else we lay him to rest among the tree-branches, and give him to the air. Then, if the black birds come streaming from far to pluck at him, that too is right, for they are the creatures of the air.

Or else we give him to the bright and hot cleanliness of fire.

Then we go about our life as before, and soon we forget, like the beasts. But this at least we have done, and when we shall no longer do it, then we shall no longer be men. ~ George R. Stewart

It's lovely, the way wishes are added to it, by lighting candles with ones that are already lit and adding them to the branches. New wishes ignited by old wishes. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Let my soul, a shining tree, Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter's night The clear-eyed angels may alight. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. ~ John Ruskin

Your brain is a forest,
And the nerves are trees.
When the branches touch,
Snaps jumps between the leaves. ~ Rich Shapero

Ledge

Birds that love
high trees
and winds

and riding
flailing branches
hate ledges
as gripless
and narrow,

so that a tail
is not just
no advantage
but ridiculous,
mashed vertical
against the wall.
You will have
seen the way
a bird who falls
on skimpy places

lifts into the air
again in seconds --
a gift denied
the rest of us
when our portion
isn't generous. ~ Kay Ryan

Tradition looks at a traditional civilization as a tree. The root of the tree is permanent and firm in the ground of revelation, but the branches grow in different seasons and in different directions. Tradition does not deny the fact that if you have a harsh and dry winter, the next spring you have fewer flowers and that if you have a winter with more agreeable conditions, you will have more flowers. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

If you had a yard as a child, you probably remember it with a startling intimacy. You knew that yard: every inch, every bush, each step on the tree you could climb, the whorls and knots in the branches, the bare dirt spots, the sandy gravel, the soft grass. It was deep, profound, intimate local knowledge. You intuitively knew what was happening around you at all times. Primitive man would have felt that way about a much larger stretch of ground, but it was still "his" territory. This very ability is really what allowed Homo sapiens to expand and succeed the way he did. ~ Sam Sheridan

It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry, wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy.
Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realized, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about sixteen feet high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday. ~ Kate Morton

The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government. ~ William Weld

Success can be attained in any branch of labor. There's always room at the top in every pursuit. ~ Andrew Carnegie

And we sang! Her voice like burning silver, my voice an echoing answer. Savien sang solid, powerful lines, like branches of a rock-old oak, all the while Aloine was like a nightingale, moving in darting circles around the proud limbs of it. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

She felt the sap rising through the trees as the blood coursing through her body, the grass sprouting out of the forest floor as the hair growing from her follicles. She felt as a tree uprooted and walking through the land, she lifted her arms as branches, each finger a tiny twig for a bird of the lair to land on. Each whisper of the wind, each fragment of birdsong traversed through her body while the scent of forest flowers seemed to permeate her very essence. She couldn't tell how long this feeling lasted, whether seconds or eternity. But she wouldn't come out of it unchanged. The forest was part of her now. ~ Tara Heavey

I hear the wind among the trees playing the celestial symphonies. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity. ~ George Washington

When I wake, it seems a little less hot than usual, so I'm worried I have a fever until light flashes behind the curtains and the sound of a detonation rolls in with a force that makes the windows rattle. As I step outside with a plastic bag over my cast, a stiff breeze pulls my hair away from my face, and I see the pregnant clouds of the monsoon hanging low over the city.
The rains have finally decided to come.
I sit down on the lawn, resting my back against the wall of the house, and light an aitch I've waited a long time to smoke. Suddenly the air is still and the trees are silent, and I can hear laughter from my neighbor's servant quarters. A bicycle bell sounds in the street, reminding me of the green Sohrab I had as a child. Then the wind returns, bringing the smell of wet soil and a pair of orange parrots that swoop down to take shelter in the lower branches of the banyan tree, where they glow in the shadows. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time. Indeed, it is precisely at those moments when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born. ~ Reza Aslan

I stroke the bleached bones of ancient trees
felled long-ago by industry or cold desperation
and wonder of another almost summer when two fell asleep
beneath her arms, curling into each other
like wind-swept branches on the edge of tomorrow ... ~ Kate Mullane Robertson