Old Trees Quotes

What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with is hand always over his heart! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The bear and I --
we rise like a windstorm
to witness these old trees talk. ~ Vivian Demuth

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. ~ Paulo Coelho

Speaking in Creations tongues, hearing Creations voices, the boundary of our soul expands. Earth has many voices. Those who understand that Earth is a living being, know this because they have translated themselves to the humble grasses and old trees. They know that Earth is a community that is constantly talking to itself; a communicating universe. And whether we know it or not, we are participating in the web of this community. ~ Joan Halifax

I have never as yet gone a step to see a literary lion; but I would go a considerable way to see Emerson, this pioneer in the moral forests of the New World, who applies his axe to the roots of the old trees to hew them down and to open the paths for new planting. ~ Fredrika Bremer

The day lingered and the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees. ~ Henry James

Nothing from the summer carries more lasting allure for me than the memory of sitting with Ruth on the bank of a stream on campus, taking turns reading aloud from the books we held on our laps, while the wind wet leaves gossiping in the old trees above us and the creek rustled in its stony bed. ~ Scott Russell Sanders

Old trees want to hurt you. It doesn't matter if you're snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, or just taking a walk in the woods. Old trees want to hurt you, and I think they'd kill you if they could. ~ Stephen King

Just touching that old tree was truly moving to me because when you touch these trees, you have such a sense of the passage of time, of history. It's like you're touching the essence, the very substance of life. ~ Kim Novak

Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I saw an astonishing spectacle down there: the roots of centuries-old trees, seen from the inside, so to speak, gigantic, twisting things, like giant, naked, suspended flowers. Go and visit that garden. I love the place, but sometimes when I'm there I detect the sent of a woman's sex, a giant, worn-out one. Which goes a little way toward confirming my obscene vision: This city faces the sea with its legs apart, its thighs spread, from the bay to the high ground where that luxurious, fragrant garden is. It was conceived - or should I say inseminated, ha, ha! - by a general, Gneral Letang, in 1847. You absolutely must go and see it - then you'll understand why people here are dying to have famous ancestors. To escape from the evidence. ~ Kamel Daoud

Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A new home by a gap in the Meng wall; Of the old trees, a few gnarled willows are left. Those who come in the future, who will they be, Grieving in vain for what others had before? ~ Wang Wei

Now that I think about it, I was arrested in 1992. Some people may think of that as a bad thing, but I feel good about it. I chained myself to the gate of a phone book factory, a GTE factory in Los Angeles. They were using thousand-year-old trees to make phone books. I think that's a total waste of a tree. ~ Winona LaDuke

Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life. ~ John Muir

The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Oh, I suppose they're not exactly gone, those green boys. It's rather like a sapling turning into a tree. Can't scrape off the bark, and whittle it down until you find that sapling again, now can you? No, of course not. The sapling becomes an oak. Forever changed. The realities of that war will remain inside us through heaven or hell. Best try and face it, Ty. Running from it won't help. You'll never turn back into the innocent sapling you once were." Robert lifted his glass and grinned. "My friend, we've become a pair of gnarled old trees. ~ Kathleen Baldwin

Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot. The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground. That the featherweight survive the massive, that this reversal of fortune takes place among us - that is what haunts me. I don't know what it means. ~ Mary Ruefle

The longer it possesseth a man the more he will delight in it, and the older he groweth the more he shall be subject to it; for it dulleth the spirits, and destroyeth the body as ivy doth the old tree, or as the worm that engendereth in the kernal of the nut. ~ Walter Raleigh

I love The Inn at Palmetto Bluff, an Auberge Property in Bluffton, South Carolina. It's a spectacular corner of the world, with massive old trees lined with Spanish moss, and alligators swimming in the river. ~ Gail Simmons

In my front yard, there are these two giant old trees, which help the porch vibe, obviously, with a forty-foot-tall canopy. It has a very Jurassic Parky vibe, but without dinosaurs. Also, most people on my street are friendly, and I don't live on an island. ~ Chad Eastham

Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well remembered form in each old tree And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy. ~ Joseph Rodman Drake

I like old people, just as I like old trees: in their shadow there is freshness and peace, one admires them, and around them everything is so calm. ~ Svetlana Alliluyeva

The dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them. ~ Walter Bagehot

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king. ~ Billy Wilder

Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores. Above the waves, dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. In these woods nights are quiet, save for the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws climbing up, clambering down. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes quietly and mostly by day. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.

Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.
Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof.
I am unnerved by the opponents of God, and God is out of earshot. I must spin good ghosts out of my hope to oppose the hordes at my window. If those who look in see me condescend to barricade the door, they will know too much and crowd in to overcome me.
The parchment philosopher has no traffic with the night, and no conception of the price of love. With smoky circles of thought he tries to combat the fog, and with anagrams to defeat anatomy. I posture in vain with his weapons, even though I am balmed with his nicotine herbs.
Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave. ~ Elizabeth Smart

How beautiful it was, lying embowered in the twilight of the old trees; the tips of the loftiest spruces came out in purple silhouettes against the north-weatersn sky of rose and amber; down behind it the Blair Water dreamed in silver; the Wind Woman had folded her misty bat-wings in a valley of sunset and stillness that lay over the world like a blessing. Emily felt sure that everything would be all right. ~ L.M. Montgomery

It is presumptuous, personally and historically, to assume that one is a part of a "saving remnant." One had better doubt that one deserves such a distinction, and had better understand that there may, after all, be nothing left to save. Even so, if one wishes to save anything not protected by the present economy - topsoil, groves of old trees, the possibility of the goodness or health of anything, even the economic relevance of the biblical tradition - one is a part of a remnant, and a dwindling remnant too, though not without hope, and not without the necessary instructions, the most pertinent of which, perhaps, is this, also from Revelation: "Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die. ~ Wendell Berry

I was so distracted when walking out of the restroom that I hadn't noticed Rose standing nearby with Dimitri Belikov. They stood arm in arm, smiling at my surprise. I hadn't seen Dimitri tonight, and his black and white guardian attire told me why. He was on duty here and had undoubtedly been one of the shadows darting among the trees of the greenhouse, keeping a watch on everyone. He must be on break now because there was no way he'd be standing so casually here, even with Rose, otherwise. And really, "casual" for Dimitri meant he could still leap into battle at any moment.
They were a striking couple. His dark-haired, dark-eyed looks matched hers, and they were both dazzlingly attractive. It was no wonder Adrian had fallen for her, and I felt surprised at how uncomfortable that memory made me. Like Sonya and Mikhail, there was a bond of love between Rose and Dimitri and Rose that was almost palpable. ~ Richelle Mead

Tohr took a pull of his beer. "What the hell is this?"
"When Harry Met Sally."
Tohr lowered the longneck from his mouth. "What?"
"Shut it. After this, we're going to watch an episode of Moonlighting. Then An Affair to Remember - the old-school one, not that stupidity with Warren Beatty. Then The Princess Bride - "
Tohr hit the switch by his hip and straightened the chair up. "Okay. Right. Have fun with this - ~ J.R. Ward

Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are: Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depth, of the city.

As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black track along the carriages' migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure.

To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Pal ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Where was the star?
Take concepts like "distant," "isolate," "faint," and give them precise mathematical expression. They'll vanish under such articulation.
But just before they do, that's where it lay.
"My star." Lorq swept vanes aside so they could see. "That's my sun. That's my nova, with eight-hundred-year-old-light. ~ Samuel R. Delany

In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn't have a care ... ~ Alex Scarrow

If there is beauty, there must be ugliness;
If there is right, there must be wrong.
Wisdom and ignorance are complementary,
And illusion and enlightenment cannot be separated.
This is an old truth, don't think it was discovered recently.
"I want this, I want that"
Is nothing but foolishness.
I'll tell you a secret -
"All things are impermanent! ~ Ryokan

When you travel, the battered old suitcase only tells half the story... ~ Virginia Alison

To the dismay of more moderate Conservatives, she rejected the conventional wisdom of compromise and consensus. "The Old Testament prophets," she preached, "didn't go out on the highways saying, 'Brothers, I want consensus.' They said, 'This is my faith and my vision! This is what I passionately believe! ~ New Word City

There are few things more rejuvenating than sharing a belly-bursting laugh with an old friend. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Be a dad. Don't be "Mom's Assistant" ... Be a man ... Fathers have skills that they never use at home. You run a landscaping business and you can't dress and feed a four-year-old? Take it on. Spend time with your kids ... It won't take away your manhood, it will give it to you. ~ Louis C.K.

We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg. We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart, But the devil whoops, as he whooped of old; It's clever, but is it art? ~ Rudyard Kipling

Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight. ~ Andrea Camilleri

I laid the tree down on the cement and started tearing through its trunk, until it was in jagged pieces. The smell of pine was overwhelming, like the tree's heart was leaking out. ~ Ava Dellaira

A long time ago, in a country not so far away, I was eight years old, doing my best Darth Vader imitation. ~ Hayden Christensen

Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones; the difference is only in the price. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Central banking has become the new central planning. Under the old central planning, government attempted to manage production and the supply of goods and services. Under the new central planning, the Fed attempts to manage the financial system and the supply and allocation of credit. ~ Anonymous

Old concept: Love is blind. Marriage is an eye opener. New concept: Love is not blind - it simply enables one to see things others fail to see. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach

At first Widmerpool and I were unable to grasp the root of the trouble, partly because Monsieur Lundquist's lobbing technique was sufficiently common for none of the rest of us specially to have noticed it that afternoon: partly because at that age I was not yet old enough to be aware of the immense rage that can be secreted in the human heart by cumulative minor irritation. ~ Anthony Powell

I think of how, even as a feminist lesbian, I have so wanted to ignore my own homophobia, my own hatred of myself for being queer. I have not wanted to admit that my deepest personal sense of myself has not quite "caught up" with my "woman-identified" politics. I have been afraid to criticize lesbian writers who choose to "skip over" these issues in the name of feminism. In 1979, we talk of "old gay" and "butch and femme" roles as if they were ancient history. We toss them aside as merely patriarchal notions. And yet, the truth of the matter is that I have sometimes taken society's fear and hatred of lesbians to bed with me. I have sometimes hated my lover for loving me. I have sometimes felt "not woman enough" for her. I have sometimes felt "not man enough." For a lesbian trying to survive in a heterosexist society, there is no easy way around these emotions. Similarly, in a white-dominated world, there is little getting around racism and our own internalization of it. It's always there, embodied in someone we least expect to rub up against. ~ Cherrie L Moraga

Fall behind me States!
A man before all - myself, typical, before all.

Give me the pay I have served for,
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid
and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence
toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,
and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,
stars, rivers,
Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for
others on the same terms,
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State,
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe his last,
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored,
To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.

(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?) ~ Walt Whitman

The Shraken-nurse turned on the nozzles for each of the drips, and the contents began to work their respective ways through his system. The left drip had a chill to it that made him feel like he was bathing in a ice-bath pumped full of extra strong Earth-based mint; while the right hand fluids were warm and fuzzy, like he was four years old and sleeping in a barrelful of teddy-bears on a hot summer's day. They quickly found their way up to his brain, and collided there in a meeting of hot and cold that, had the encounter happened in the atmosphere, would have produced the biggest cumulus cloud in the cosmos. ~ John K. Irvine

As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought And fanned the dreams it never brought. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colors until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone… His fear infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over his shoulder, wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for -
Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air. Harry thought of lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand.
"Don't kill me!"
"That was not my intention."
Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his robes whipping around him, and his face was illuminated from below in the light cast by his wand.
"Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?"
"No - no message - I'm here on my own account!"
Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him.
"I - I come with a warning - no, a request - please - "
Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced eac ~ J.K. Rowling

My head snaps in her direction. 'Stop that,' I say, standing in place.
'Stop what?' she asks.
'With this thing, this niceness.'
'What d-you-?'
'I'm kytaen, a tool. You're Chosen. We're not friends. That kind of word doesn't exist between our two species. Treat me how you're supposed to and stop this… act.'
A moment passes, and then she says, 'I see. So there's going to be no civility between us, eh?'
'I'm glad you finally understand.'
'I didn't exactly overlook your unsubtle hostility towards me.'
'Then why bother being nice?'
'I was raised to be polite to elderly people.'
'Then you should know I'm not old. I'm immortal.'
'Quit bragging'
I blink. 'I wasn't bragging, I was stating a fact.'
'It sounded like bragging to me.'
'It wasn't.'
'It sounded like it.'
'Well it wasn't.'
'Old men do tend to brag after all.'
'I wasn't bragging!'
She gives me an impish grin. 'They also lose their temper easily.'
I grit my teeth. ~ Giselle Simlett

Hip-hop is such an amazing thing that kids still want to do it. They're not saying, "Ugh, that's the old people's music." No, they're younger than they've ever been that want to get into hip-hop music. ~ Nas

Watching my four year old daughter dance
I cannot break free of her. ~ Ikkyu

What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me. ~ Erich Segal

My main ambition as a gardener is to water my orange trees with gin, then all I have to do is squeeze the juice into a glass. ~ W.C. Fields

Wisdom comes through suffering or old age. ~ Lesley Pearse

Old radicals never changed. They just got law degrees and updated their bag of tricks. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I've walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I've brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking. ~ Chila Woychik

India is an Old country but a young nation ... I am young and I too have a dream, I dream of India Strong, Independent, Self-Reliant and in the front rank of the nations of the world, in the service of mankind. ~ Rajiv Gandhi

The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell - unquestionably. You just couldn't take a bad picture of those two old girls ~ Diana Vreeland

It's like that old saying, Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. ~ Gayle Forman

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It's always precisely the sort of smug old wanker you would never ever want to end up like. We don't live the way you tell us to because we're afraid that if we do we'll grow up to be like you, and the thought of that is unbearable. It's alright for you because you'll be dead soon anyway, but we've still got another fifty or sixty years to live in this stinking country. ~ Ryu Murakami

There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece. ~ Abraham Verghese

There are some old photographs from where if you take anything out, even a chicken or a little bird, the magic will disappear. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you. ~ Bennett Cerf

Avail five before five:

Your youth before senility (old age)
Fitness before sickness
Wealth before poverty (needy)
Free time before busy time
Life before death. ~ Muhammad (PBUH)

Before he reached the door the old man called to him again. The boy turned and stood. The matrix will not help you, the old man said. He said to catch the wolf the boy should find that place where the acts of God and those of man are of one piece. Where they cannot be distinguished ... The old man said that it was not a question of finding such a place but rather of knowing it when it presented itself. He said that it was at such places that God sits and conspires in the destruction of that which he has been at such pains to create. ~ Cormac McCarthy

We must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I don't want to look old and worn, but what can you do? My real focus is being an actor. I care more about having the opportunity to play roles that I haven't played than I care if my neck looks like someone's bedroom curtains. ~ Sally Field

Suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. ~ E. E. Cummings

I think one of the great bits of The Muppet show is that it was set in a 19th century British theater and they live so nicely amongst that lovely old theater. ~ James Bobin