Our Trees Quotes

Full of beautiful grace so we steal their space, and death comes quickly. ~ Sara Quin

If we're destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there's got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

When you look at what is happening to our world-and it is hard to look at what's happening to our water, our air, our trees, our fellow species-it becomes clear that unless you have some roots in a spiritual practice that holds life sacred and encourages joyful communion with all your fellow beings, facing the enormous challenges ahead becomes nearly impossible. ~ Joanna Macy

Why do the chimookomanag want us?" she growled. "They take all that makes us Anishinaabeg. Everything about us. First our land, then our trees. Now husbands, our wives, our children, our souls. Why do they want to capture every bit? ~ Louise Erdrich

To those who may have wisely kept their fancies within the boundary of the fields we know it is difficult for me to tell of the land to which Alveric had come, so that in their minds they can see that plain with its scattered trees and far off the dark wood out of which the palace of Elfland lifted those glittering spires, and above them and beyond them that serene range of mountains whose pinnacles took no colour from any light we see. Yet it is for this very purpose that our fancies travel far, and if my reader through fault of mine fail to picture the peaks of Elfland my fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know. Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water. And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefather of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day. ~ Lord Dunsany

When I was growing up, kids would go outside and play all day and invent things. And my brothers and I pretended our picnic table was a ship one summer. Our bikes were horses, and our trees were forts. We turned everything in the world into make-believe. ~ Mary Pope Osborne

My voice sounded like one of the guinea fowl that screeched in our trees as it pooped, but I never let that stop me. ~ William Kamkwamba

There is nothing so striking to the eye on a return to England from the Continent as the stateliness of our trees. I do not know of any trees in Europe to compare with ours. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

They say you're big before you're small I'm sure glad I don't know it all. ~ Sara Quin

If we take care of our trees,
our trees will take care of us.
If we take care of our animals,
our animals will take care of us.
If we take care of our land,
our land will take care of us.
If we take care of our world,
our world will take care of us. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If we wish to have the light, we must keep the sun; if we wish to keep our forests we must keep our trees; if we wish to keep our perfumes, we must keep our flowers- and if we wish to keep our rights, then we must keep our God. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Miracles do happen. You must believe this. No matter what else you believe about life, you must believe in miracles. Because we are all, every one of us, living on a round rock that spins around and around at almost a quarter of a million miles per hour in an unthinkably vast blackness called space. There is nothing else like us for as far as our telescopic eyes can see. In a universe filled with spinning, barren rocks, frozen gas, ice, dust, and radiation, we live on a planet filled with soft, green leaves and salty oceans and honey made from bees, which themselves live within geometrically complex and perfect structures of their own architecture and creation. In our trees are birds whose songs are as complex and nuanced as Beethoven's greatest sonatas. And despite the wild, endless spinning of our planet and its never-ending orbit around the sun–itself a star on fire–when we pour water into a glass, the water stays in the glass. All of these are miracles. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Our trees
were nuns at the edge of our plans, praying for us ~ Sue Goyette

There is a fearful moment of reckoning before us should it ever chance that when all our trees shall have been sacrificed on the altar of the patron-fiend of news, the newspaper supply shall suddenly be cut off and we find ourselves some fine morning minus our tidbits of shame and failure and disaster, left to the companionship of our own thoughts. Dante never imagined a terror like this. ~ Adeline Knapp

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away. ~ Robert Frost

Our tree's only source of energy is the sun: after light photons stimulate the pigments within the leaf, buzzing electrons line up into an unfathomably long chain and pass their excitement one to the other, moving biochemical energy across the cell to the exact location where it is needed. The plant pigment chlorophyll is a large molecule, and within the bowl of its spoon-shaped structure sits one single precious magnesium atom. The amount of magnesium needed for enough chlorophyll to fuel thirty-five pounds of leaves is equivalent to the amount of magnesium found in fourteen One A Day vitamins, and it must ultimately dissolve out of bedrock, which is a geologically slow process. ~ Hope Jahren

If he be so resolved, I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betrayed with trees And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers ~ William Shakespeare

ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he'd just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he's going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, "Where are you from?" And I said, "New York." And he said, "Ah, New York, yes, that's a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?" And I said, "Oh, yes." And he said, "Why do you think they don't leave?" And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, "Oh, I don't think it's that way at all." He said, "I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they've built - they've built their own prison - and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have - having been lobotomized - the capacity to leave the prison they've made or even to see it as a prison." And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, "This is a pine tree." And he put it in my hand. And he said, "Escape before it's too late. ~ Wallace Shawn

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. ~ George R R Martin

I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees. ~ Tom Robbins

That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bit and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers. ~ C.S. Lewis

What is a potto?"
"It is a little furry creature that sleeps all day with its head between its legs and then walks about very, very slowly all night, high in the trees, slowly eating leaves and creeping up on birds as they roost and eating them too. ~ Patrick O'Brian

I've always been more interested in organisms that can move on their own than in stationary plants. But when I canoe or hike along the edge of lakes or oceans and see trees that seem to be growing out of rock faces, I am blown away. How do they do it? ~ David Suzuki

You don't see the forest for the trees. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If I am going to be drowned - if I am going to be drowned - if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? ~ Stephen Crane

Are there bears in these mountains?" he asked.
His companion nodded. "Of course. But it's a bit early in the year for them to be moving around. Why?"
Halt let go a long breath. "Just a vague hope, really. There's a chance that when the Temujai here you crashing around in the trees, they might think you're a bear."
Erak smiled, with his mouth only. His eyes were as cold as the snow.
"You're a very amusing fellow," he told Halt. "I'd like to brain you with my ax one of these days."
"If you could manage to do it quietly, I'd almost welcome it," Halt said. ~ John Flanagan

What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain. ~ Martha Gellhorn

No, but we are all children of the earth, all of us, the trees and flowers and each soul born, all known, all beloved, all part of God's great plan. Everything happens for a purpose, lady. Life is a great gift, but it is for you to choose how you shall use it. ~ Elizabeth English

I had been walking through the Chakara Forest. Fat moths the size of palms wreathed my hair like pearls and moonstones. And then, as I had done since before language burgeoned in the velvet clefts of the mind--I danced.
Not a slow dance, but sharp, punctual movements. My dance organized the shadows of trees, canceled the cloying plumes of wind-fallen fruit, aligned the moonbeams themselves. My back arced gracefully as I moved, neck extended like an oryx, fingers conjuring sharp kathas of rhythm, when a sound crunched not far from me.
I spun around. "Who's there?"
From beneath the heart-shaped leaves of a peepal tree, something rustled. And a voice, so lush it made ambrosia acrid, answered me.
"Only the lowly painter who tries each night, in vain, to capture evening herself."
"What do you want? Show yourself."
The stranger stepped out of the peepal tree. He was broad-shouldered, his features as severely beautiful as a strike of lightning. He wore a crown of blackbuck horns that arced in graceful whorls of onyx, catching the light. But it was his gaze that robbed the clamoring rhythm in my chest.
His stare slipped beneath my skin. And when he saw my eyes widen, he smiled. And in that moment, his smile banished my loneliness and limned the hollows of my anima with starlight, pure and bright. He moved toward me, grasping my hand, and his touch hummed in my bones like an aria. A song to my dance. The beginning of a promise. ~ Roshani Chokshi

I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
Quartet of crickets chime in for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings, would you strum on mine? ~ Owl City

Do you understand the plan?"
They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed. "What's that wobbly thing?" he said. "Is it a tree?"
"Those are the gates," Jace said.
"Ohh," said Isabelle, pleased. "So what are the swirly bits? Is there a moat?
"Those are trajectory lines - Honestly, am I the only person who's ever seen a strategy map?", Jace demanded, throwing his stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. "Do you understand anything I just said."
"No," Clary said. "Your strategy is probably awesome, but your drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and the fortress looks like a frog. ~ Cassandra Clare

She died."
I had to prompt him.
"Soon after?"
"In the early hours of February the nineteenth, 1916." I tried to see the expression on his face, but it was too dark. "There was a typhoid epidemic. She was working in a hospital."
"Poor girl."
"All past. All under the sea."
"You make it seem present."
"I do not wish to make you sad."
"The scent of lilac."
"Old man's sentiment. Forgive me."
There was a silence between us. He was staring into the night. The bat flitted so low that I saw its silhouette for a brief moment against the Milky Way.
"Is this why you never married?"
"The dead live."
The blackness of the trees. I listened for footsteps, but none came. A suspension.
"How do they live?"
And yet again he let the silence come, as if the silence would answer my questions better than he could himself; but just when I had decided he would not answer, he spoke.
"By love. ~ John Fowles

Where are there towns but no houses, roads but no cars, forests but no trees?
Answer on a map
(Riddle on children's breakfast TV) ~ Audur Ava Olafsdottir

To see a tree in Winter is to see it for what it really is. A Winter tree is an object so intricate and so perplexing that if it hadn't already; been decided that Winter trees were plain and boring, we would be spending hours pondering them, staring at them in astonishment. ~ Vivian Swift

And though he liked drawing trees he liked most of all to be with trees. He would climb them, lean against them, even talk to them. It saddened him to discover the not everyone shared his feelings towards them. ~ Humphrey Carpenter

He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and the good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The forest wanted to beg for mercy but knew precious little about us. Pine trees roared like chainsaws, hoping this was the language of man. ~ T.R. Darling

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. ~ Edmund Spenser

We were all grinning and everyone had their eyes open for once. Ian must have been moving - his hand was blurred. It was exactly how I imagined us, right down to Kieran's arm around me and the peace sign he was making above Matty's head. The big carving was behind us, and the other trees leaned into the picture, like giant people.

Then a cloud went over the sun and Ian said he had better get going. I wished we had taken five pictures so that we could all have a copy. When I looked at the image again, the colours had already started to fade, as if it was a moment we could never have back. ~ Inga Simpson

Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What the fuck is that?" I ask Uncle Drew as he walks up to us. "That, my little asshole, is a screaming goat. Molly showed me this awesome video on YouTube and I had to get one," Uncle Drew says with a huge smile. "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Uncle Drew turns around and points proudly to a little black and white goat tied to one of Aunt Liz and Uncle Jim's trees. "Isn't she cute? Her name is Taylor Swift." "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" the goat screams as she looks right at us. "I don't even understand what is happening right now," I reply with a shake of my head. "I've been trying to teach her - " "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" "How to sing a - " "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" "Song, but she never comes in at the right - " "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! ~ Tara Sivec

And then I remembered something. Holy crap, I'd obviously been without magic for way too long to have forgotten one of the coolest spells I could do.
"Stop!" I yelled.. Archer, Cal, and Jenna all skidded to a halt on the sand. I waved my hands at them to come closer. "Okay, everybody hold hands," I said.
Archer stared at me, one hand pressed to his bleeding chest. "Sophie, this really isn't the time for a friendship circle."
"It's not that," I said. "It's this."
I closed my eyes and channeled all my magic into a transportation spell. There was a rush of icy air, and then we were standing in the grove of trees that housed Hex Hall's very own Itineris.
"Wow," Jenna breathed. "It is awesome to have you back."
Magic and satisfaction rushed through me. "You said it," I agreed. "Now come on."
And with that, the four of us dove into the Itineris. ~ Rachel Hawkins

In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees. ~ Cynthia Hand

I have the opportunity, once more to right some wrongs, to pray for peace, to plant some trees, and sing more joyful songs. ~ William Arthur Ward

What do you think? Who are these people who have depicted heaven as a playboy Club - who are these people? Starved, poor, who have missed their life - they are projecting their desires in heaven. In heaven there are rivers of wine ... who are these people who are imagining rivers of wine? They must have missed here. And there are wish-fulfilling trees. You sit underneath them, desire, and the moment you desire, immediately it is fulfilled. ~ Rajneesh

Two trees - knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying. ~ Orson Scott Card

We walked down a crunchy, leafed path as the sun shot through the tall, semi-bare trees. Yellows, browns, oranges and reds still clung to life and those that had lost the battle decorated the foliage and grounds. ~ Denise Baer

The Arctic is a highway. The tree limit, the scarcity of trees, freed people to walk. Particularly in the wintertime. Which connected people physically, communicatively. And mythically. The long nights of winter free people to tell. And to listen ... ~ Nils Aslak Valkeapaa

Now I see how many wolf characteristics you had. You were wary, didn't really trust anyone or anything. You were elusive and secretive. You paced out behind the trees, watching everything and waiting for the moment when it was safe to come in and rest by the fire. But you weren't happy there -- no, I take that back, you were happy there, but you weren't comfortable. It wasn't what you knew. It wasn't what you trusted. You trusted meanness, not kindness. Kindness spooked you -- you were always looking for the trap in it. You trusted in a scrappy existence where you had to fight for your survival. ~ Helen Humphreys

There's a realm above the trees
Where the lost are finally found
Touch your feathers to the breeze
And leave the ground. ~ Owl City

For no real reason – well, perhaps because of the seriousness under the trees or Nader's hair, which was very messy and covered in little grass seeds – Katie began to giggle. She knew it was wrong, yet it was also natural. She covered her mouth with both hands, but Nader was already pale with revulsion. He turned and marched away into unwanted sunlight, leaving her to wonder why bad things happened and why no good person prevented them. ~ Carla H. Krueger

You occasionally hear it said that spiritual aspirants should drop everything and set off for the woods, or go to India and wander about on the slopes of the Himalayas. But only through daily contact with people--not trees or brooks or deer--can we train ourselves to be selfless in personal relationships. ~ Eknath Easwaran

Many parts of a pine tree are edible. ~ Euell Gibbons

Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life. ~ Craig Childs

She knew that the dead hid pieces of themselves in the world. They buried organs in the living. They stuffed memories into trees and clouds and other innocuous things. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There's something solid and constant about trees." I said quietly. "They may change through the seasons, but they're always there. They're dependable. ~ Julianne Donaldson

ANOTHER TWILIGHT
Allow the point of the Croccodrillo
its hazy cypress trees in profile
Like a rough sketch for the Isle
of the Dead, as seen from yellow
stucco, his Villa Igea where Lawrence
finished "Sons and Lovers," wild thyme
scenting olive-grove grass, crime
scenery come back to more than once.
Again you're mirrored in lake shadow,
a white sail flaking on its turquoise
wavelets, keep awake by traffic noise
Along the Gardesana...and you know
that this beauty's unbearable as before
even if seen from its opposite shore. ~ Peter Robinson