Gallows Tree Quotes

The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee. ~ Walter Raleigh

I'll tell you something,' he said, as if he had said nothing that day. 'You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging. ~ Neil Gaiman

On the gallows tree, all men are brothers. ~ George R R Martin

Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love
that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.You are
the tree of Life. Beware of fractionating yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor
set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother-
soil. That is precisely what you do when you love one part more than
the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest. No love is possible except
by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self.
Therefore is God all Love, because he loves himself. So long as you
are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you
found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your
love is ephemeral. ~ Mikhail Naimy

Old Rekohu's claim to singularity, however, lay in its unique pacific creed. Since time immemorial, the Moriori's priestly caste dictated that whosoever spilt a man's blood killed his own mana - his honor, his worth, his standing & his soul. No Moriori would shelter, feed, converse with, or even see the persona non grata. If the ostracized murderer survived his first winter, the desperation of solitude usually drove him to a blowhole on Cape Young, where he took his life.

Consider this, Mr. D'Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans's best guess) enshrine "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in word & in deed & frame an oral "Magna Carta" to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More's Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? "Here," declaimed Mr. D'Arnoq, "and where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood!" (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, "I could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as 'noble. ~ David Mitchell

Born? Hell, Babe Ruth wasn't born. He fell from a tree. ~ Joe Dugan

For the rest of the night he sat by himself under the elm-tree. Until this moment it had never seemed to him that his magicianship set him apart from other men. But now he had glimpsed the wrong side of something. He had the eeriest feeling - as if the world were growing older around him, and the best part of existence - laughter, love and innocence - were slipping irrevocably into the past. ~ Susanna Clarke

But will anyone again look at that tree, read that poem, love a dog in quite my way? I am a particular and, despite the commonness of all people, a unique person in the way I perceive and think and appreciate, and I am sad that this particularity shall before too long be gone. This is not arrogance; it is the simple truth, known to anyone who has loved a person dead in the fullness of her life: what we miss is the particularity, that unique voice. [pp. 184-185] ~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun

We could say that the totality, life wants the sapling to become a tree, but the sapling doesn't see itself as separate from life and so wants nothing for itself. It is one with what life wants. That's why it isn't worried or stressed. And, if it has to die prematurely, it dies with ease.. ~ Eckhart Tolle

There was Ffloyd, the Human Money Tree: the music would suddenly stop and Ffloyd would run through the room, naked, with a hundred one-dollar bills taped to his body. He ran in one door and out the other. A free-for-all ensued and whatever you grabbed was yours to keep.
That idea proved so popular, it morphed into the $1,000 Drop. Michael would stand on a table and toss a thousand dollar bills to an often violent mob. Of course, he usually pocketed $990 and passed the remaining ten on to tip-challenged friends. But two hundred blue-faced freaks still screamed and cried and clawed and climbed to get to Michael; why, you would have thought the New Kids on the Block were masturbating on stage, the way everybody carried on. ~ James St. James

Bone white, blood red, here lies something long dead.
Tree of death and heart of stone. Never enter the crypt alone.
If you do, He'll mark your tracks, hunt you down, and then attack.
Bone white, blood red, there lie those who should have died. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

I think the most enduring lesson I was taught through my experiences of being a Girl Scout was that I was a member of a larger community. I out-grew my uniforms and badges years ago, but the memories of visiting nursing homes or organizing Earth Day tree plantings or my summers camping with girls from all different backgrounds will stay with me always. ~ Natalie Merchant

So, let's get back to why the roots are the most important part of a tree. Conceivably, this is where the tree equivalent of a brain is located. Brain? you ask. Isn't that a bit farfetched? Possibly, but now we know that trees can learn. This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanism inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are the part of the tree best suited to the task. The old spruce in Sweden also shows that what grows underground is the most permanent part of the tree-and where else would it store important information over a long period of time? Moreover, current research shows that a tree's delicate root networks is full of surprises.

It is now an accepted fact that the root network is in charge of all chemical activity in the tree. And there's nothing earth shattering about that. Many of our internal processes are also regulated by chemical messengers. Roots absorb substances and bring them into the tree. In the other direction, they deliver the products of photosynthesis to the tree's fungal partners and even route warning signals to neighboring trees. But a brain? For there to be something we would recognize as a brain, neurological processes must be involved, and for these, in addition to chemical messages, you need electrical impulses. And these are precisely what we can measure in the tree, and we've been able to do so since as far back as the nineteenth century ~ Peter Wohlleben

Even a broken tree can bear fruit ~ Rick Warren

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) ~ Jonas Mekas

Pension Love songs in old age have an edge to them like dry leaves. The tree we planted shakes in the wind of time. Our thoughts are birds that sit in the boughs and remember; we call them down to the remains of poetry. We sit opposite one another at table, parrying our sharp looks with our blunt smiles. 1977 ~ R.S. Thomas

She wasn't mine. She hadn't been mine for a long time. She shouldn't be here and I shouldn't have asked. So instead of reassuring her, I kept leaning agains the tree looking like the devil and hoping she turned and ran. ~ The Vincent Boys ~ Abbi Glines

The fruit of my tree of knowledge is plucked, and it is this: "Adventures are to the adventurous." ~ Benjamin Disraeli

If a tree is bent, every goat will jump on it. ~ Eva Stachniak

Be a helpful friend, and you will become a green tree with always new fruit, always deeper journeys into love. ~ Rumi

Sometimes, Gerald, people break the law so clearly you can hear it crack like a tree branch snapped in two. But other times, like a baker twisting a roll of dough into a pretzel, you only bend the law. You don't tear it. You don't break it. You end up with something better than the ingredients you started with. And the final result is beautiful to behold. ~ Paul Levine

Not long ago-incredible though it may seem-I heard a clerk of Oxford declare that he 'welcomed' the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive traffic, because it brought his university into 'contact with real life.' He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression 'real life' in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more 'real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Are spirits so involved in men's lives? Marley asked.
Mankind is inolved in men's lives. We only help them know how.
...Jacob, all around you, every day, as you walk the miles of earth, there are calls to your spirit and to all others' spirits as well. They come from your fellow beings and from life itself: the way the sun highlights a tree, a bird song lilting across the morning, the smell of flowers. All these are for your joy, but also for more. They call you. ~ R. William Bennett

They regarded our passage not at all, and by the afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree. ~ Robin Hobb

Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in his moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in himself--it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but bound now in eternity; rage that had no language, weeping with no voice--which yet spoke now, to John's startled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most wretched, the dungeon most absolute, of love's bed defiled, and birth dishonored, and most bloody, unspeakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the body on the tree. John looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soul whispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: Where shall I go? ~ James Baldwin

Having a few half fish in my family tree keeps my vision from blurring through the pudgy tears-I can perfectly see the solid yellow line on the road as I walk it. When I hear him following, I rip off my heels and start sprinting. Two months ago, this kind of abuse to my feet would leave them bleeding and with who-knows-what embedded in them. But with the convenience of my new thick skin, running barefoot is like running in Nike's latest kicks.
Galen is apparently a flying fish though-his hand wraps around my arm, braking my own sad attempt at flight. He whirls me around. Pulling me to him, he lifts my chin with the pad of his thumb. When I jerk away, he grasps it tight, forcing me to look at him. The old Emma would be bruised within the next ten minutes. The new one is just pissed off.
"Let go!" I screech, pushing against his chest. Somehow this just gets me closer to him.
"Emma," he growls as I stomp his foot. "What would you have done?"
Okay, that's unexpected. I stop flailing. "What? ~ Anna Banks

The sharp knife of dawn glitters in my hand but how bare is everything-tall tall tree infinite air, the unrelaxing tension of the world and only hope, hope only, the kind eagle soars and wheels in flight. ~ Martin Carter

I read a report that said 88% of adults trust their doctors - well, 100% of dead people don't! ~ Stewart Stafford

And remember, even when you can't sing, you can always plant a tree ~ David Archuleta

I kept a picture of me kissing my dad's corpse on the forehead in my wallet for years. I'd break it out any time someone showed me a baby picture, just so they would know how it ends. ~ Doug Stanhope

I would do Winnie the Pooh. We would live in the tree house. We would hunt for honey. ~ Jerusha Hess

Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Forestry is the work of nation builders. ~ William Bulfin

Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars. ~ Michael Palin

He threw up the conkers into the air in his great happiness. In the tree above him they disturbed a roosting crow, which erupted from the branches with an explosive bang of its wings, then rose up above him towards the sky, its harsh, ambiguous call coming back in long, grating waves towards the earth, to be heard by those still living. ~ Sebastian Faulks

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

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

JESUS & THE WEATHER

I don't think Jesus Who is Our Lord would have liked the weather in Limerick because it's always raining and the Shannon keeps the whole city damp. My father says the Shannon is a killer river because it killed my two brothers. When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.

Anytime Jesus got hungry all He had to do was go up the road to a fig tree or an orange tree and have His fill. If He wanted a pint He could wave His hand over a big glass and there was the pint. Or He could visit Mary Magdalene and her sister, Martha, and they'd give Him His dinner no questions asked and He'd get his feet washed and dried with Mary Magdalene's hair while Martha washed the dishes, which I don't think is fair. Why should she have to wash the dishes while her sister sits out there chatting away with Our Lord? It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him.

The End. ~ Frank McCourt

You will find that we simply provided the noose. You built the gallows, mounted the steps, put your neck in the rope, and jumped. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because He alone gives it ... ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Luckily, my children love broccoli, and although we sometimes enter into UN-like negotiations about how many 'trees' they need to eat before they can partake of ice cream, it is a vegetable that they tend to embrace. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

Hermione looked far and far and George was a midge and a leaf was the size of a house and an acorn-cup would shelter herself ... for ... I am a tree planted by the river of water ... I am in the word tree. I am tree exactly. ~ H.D.

Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone. Tree and flower and leaf and grass, Let them pass! Let them pass! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien