Tree quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside tree — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are."
"Gravity is only the bark of wisdom's tree, but it preserves it."
"The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart."
"A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials. Someone is enjoying shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
"Some say that happiness is not good for mortals, & they ought to be answered that sorrow is not fit for immortals & is utterly useless to any one; a blight never does good to a tree, & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit, let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight."
"Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation."
"Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree."
"The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not to bar Our passage to our journey's end for good, But just to ask us who we think we are."
"I saw them; there is nothing beautiful about them, just that they are a little higher than the others. Referring to one of the oldest and loveliest groves of redwoods, showing insensitivity to their magnificence."
"Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy."
"Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me"
"The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs."
"... photographs are so loaded with information. They're remarkable. As I said, you get both the tree and the forest."
"Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--"
"Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something."
"In that case, there is no time to lose. Plant it this afternoon!"
"A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening..."
"What do we plant when we plant a tree? A thousand things that we daily see, We plant the spire that out-towers the crag, We plant the staff for our country's flag; We plant the shade from the hot sun free, We plant all these when we plant the tree."
"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."
"Character is like a tree, and reputation is like its shadow."
