Tree Quotes - Page 25

• It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Night, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1571, Delphi Classics

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• Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Humility, Pride, Feet

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Ballad Of The White Horse”

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• The tree is known by his fruit.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Fruit, Known

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• If trees can create art, if they can encircle the globe seven times in one year, if prisoners can grow plants and raise frogs, then perhaps there are other static entities that we hold inside ourselves, like grief, like addictions, like racism, that can also change.

  Nalini Nadkarni

  Art, Grief, Years

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• In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it... Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Heart, Cutting, Sap

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter IX, Section 3), circa 15 BC.

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• When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Juice, Hollow

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter IX, Section 4), irca 15 BC.

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• The leaves of these [larch] trees are like those of the pine; timber from them comes in long lengths, is as easily wrought in joiner's work as is the clearwood of fir, and contains a liquid resin, of the color of Attic honey, which is good for consumptives.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Color, Long, Honey

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book II, Chapter IX, Section 17,

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• Trees which grow in places facing the course of the sun are not of porous fiber but are solid, being drained by the dryness... The trees in sunny neighborhoods, therefore, being solidified by the compact texture of their fiber, and not being porous from moisture, are very useful, so far as durability goes, when they are hewn into timber. The lowland firs, being conveyed from sunny places, are better than those highland firs, which are brought here from shady places.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Moisture, Texture, Fiber

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter X "Highland and Lowland Fir", Section 1), circa 15 BC.

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• With the ripening of the fruits in Autumn the leaves begin to wither and the trees, taking up their sap from the earth through the roots, recover themselves and are restored to their former solid texture. But the strong air of winter compresses and solidifies them.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Strong, Autumn, Winter

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 2, c. 15 BC.

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• O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Queens, Clothes, Long

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• The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas treewill bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them.

  Henry Adams

  Beautiful, Dog, Spring

  Henry Adams, Worthington Chauncey Ford (1969). “1892-1918”

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• You were wise not to waste years in a lawsuit ... he who commences a suit resembles him who plants a palm-tree which he will not live to see flourish.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Wise, Years, Law

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• So, just for one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung.

  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

  Autumn, Way, Breeze

  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, “How The Leaves Came Down”

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• Lightning will wreck its displeasures not only upon pillars, trees, and sheep, but upon altars and temples, and let the sacrilegious go free.

  Seneca the Younger

  Sheep, Lightning, Wrecks

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• As the monkey climbs the tree, more people can see his bottom.

  Jean-Louis Gassee

  People, Monkeys, Bottom

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• 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

  Men, Nuts, Ivy

  Sir Walter Raleigh (1829). “The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt: Miscellaneous works”, p.568

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• When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Cutting, Government, Wish

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• Come forth, old man,--thy daughter's side
  Is now the fitting place for thee:
  When time has quell'd the oak's bold pride,
  The youthful tendril yet may hide,
  The ruins of the parent tree.

  Walter Scott

  Daughter, Pride, Men

  Walter Scott (2016). “Woodstock, Complete: Scott's Works Vol.24”, p.44, VM eBooks

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• It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, careworn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn; and feel most delight in the returning spring.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Children, Spring, Autumn

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• Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Heart, Home, Genius

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• There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Character, Good Luck, Adversity

  Lajos Kossuth (1852). “Proceedings, Speeches,&c. at the Dinner given to Louis Kossuth at the National Hotel, Washington, Jan. 7, 1852”, p.3

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• Reason ought not, like vanity, to adorn herself with ancient parchments, and the display of a genealogical tree; more dignified in her proceedings, and proud of her immortal nature, she ought to derive everything from herself.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Vanity, Proud, Ancient

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• The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich vareity of the world.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Thinking, Individuality, Special

  "Evidences for an Administrative Science: A review of the Administrative Science Quarterly, volumes 1 and 2". Administrative Science Quarterly. Volume 3, No. 1, p. 14, 1958.

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• Along a stream that raced and ran
  Through tangled trees and over stones,
  That long had heard the pipes o' Pan
  And shared the joys that nature owns,
  I met a fellow fisherman,
  Who greeted me in cheerful tones.
  . . . .
  Foes think the bad in him they've guessed
  And prate about the wrong they scan;
  Friends that have seen him at his best
  Believe they know his every plan;
  I know him better than the rest,
  I know him as a fisherman.

  Edgar Guest

  Believe, Thinking, Fishing

  Edgar Albert Guest, “The Fisherman”

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• There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul
  Like a day on a stream,
  Back on the banks of the old fishing hole
  Where a fellow can dream.
  There's nothing so good for a man as to flee
  From the city and lie
  Full length in the shade of a whispering tree
  And gaze at the sky.
  . . . .
  It is good for the world that men hunger to go
  To the banks of a stream,
  And weary of sham and of pomp and of show
  They have somewhere to dream.
  For this life would be dreary and sordid and base
  Did they not now and then
  Seek refreshment and calm in God's wide, open space
  And come back to be men.

  Edgar Guest

  Dream, Lying, Men

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