Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Green Way Research, Red Bluff, California
"Being thus prepared for us in all ways,
and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building,
and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and
admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of
our
being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either
who
loves trees enough, and everyone is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them,
if his life has brought them in his way."
- John Ruskin, 1819-1900, Modern Painters VI
"The tree which moves some to tears of
joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself."
- William Blake, 1799, The Letters
"I frequently tramped eight or ten
miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree,
or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines."
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862
"Around a flowering tree, one finds many
insects."
- Proverb from Guinea
"Why are there trees I never walk
under but large and
melodious thoughts descend upon me?"
- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
"God is the experience of looking at a
tree and saying, "Ah!" "
- Joseph Campbell
"Though a tree grows so high, the
falling leaves return to the root."
-
Malay proverb
"Keep a green tree in your heart and
perhaps a singing bird will come."
- Chinese proverb
"I like trees because they seem more
resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."
- Willa Cather (1873-1947), O Pioneers 1913
"Do not be afraid to go out on a limb
... That's where the fruit is."
- Anonymous
"Sometimes Thou may'st walk in Groves,
which being full of Majestie will much advance the Soul."
- Thomas Vaughan, Anima Magica Abscondita
Nature Spirits: Tree Spirits, Forest Spirits
One Old Druid's Final Journal: Notebooks of the Librarian of Gushen Grove
"If trees could scream, would we be so
cavalier about cutting them down?
We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."
- Jack Handey
"Of the infinite variety of fruits
which spring from the bosom of the earth,
the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity."
- Susan Fenimore Cooper
"I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all."
- Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1933
"The groves were God's first temples."
- William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn
"From a fallen tree, all make
kindling."
- Spanish proverb
"If a tree dies, plant another in its
place."
- Linnaeus
"A tree falls the way it leans."
Bulgarian Proverb
"People in suburbia see trees differently than
foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree
is in someone's backyard .... You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber."
- Roger Swain
"And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance—
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins."
- Kathleen Raine, Envoi
"Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how
unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through.
One life for another."
- Shirley Ann Grau
"The creation of a thousand forests is in one
acorn."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"O chestnut tree, great rooted
blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance."
- William Butler Yeats, Among School Children
"A man is a bundle of relations, a
knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world."
- Ralph W. Emerson, 1803 - 1882
"He that planteth a tree is a servant
of God, he
provideth a kindness for many generations, and
faces that he hath not seen shall bless him."
- Henry Van Dyke
"There is, I conceive, scarcely any
tree that may not be advantageously
used in the various combinations of form and color."
- Gilpin
"Alone with myself
The trees bend to caress me
The shade hugs my heart"
- Candy Polgar
"Life without love is like a tree without blossom
and fruit."
- Khalil Gibran
"In creating, the only hard thing's to
begin;
a grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak."
- James Russell Lowell
"Happy is the man ... his delights is
in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither."
- Psalms 1: 1-3
"When you enter a grove peopled with
ancient trees, higher than
the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined
branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of
the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike
you with the presence of a deity?"
- Seneca
"Many people, other than the authors,
contribute to the making of a book, from the first
person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable
type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It is not
customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total."
- Rada and Forsyth, Machine Learning
"What kind of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?"
- Bertolt Brecht, To Those Born Later
"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can."
- William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned
"A virgin forest is where the hand of
man has never set foot."
- Author Unknown
"Other holidays repose on the past.
Arbor Day proposes the future."
- J. Sterling Morton
"Larger and finer meanings are read into
the older legends of the plants, and the
universality of certain myths is expressed in the concurrence of ideas in the
beginnings of the great religions. One of the first figures in the leading
cosmologies
is a tree of life guarded by a serpent. In the Judaic faith this was the tree in the
garden of Eden; the Scandinavians made it an ash, Ygdrasil; Christians usually
specify the tree as an apple, Hindus as a soma, Persians as a homa, Cambodians
as a talok; this early tree is the vine of Bacchus, the snake-entwined caduceus of
Mercury, the twining creeper of the Eddas, the bohidruma of Buddha, the fig of
Isaiah, the tree of Aesculapius with the serpent around his trunk."
- Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits
and Plants, 1911
"That each day I may walk unceasingly
on the banks of my water, that my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, that I may refresh myself under the shadow of my sycomore."
- Egyptian tomb inscription, circa 1400 BCE
Sycomore trees were held to be sacred in ancient Egypt and are the first trees represented
in ancient art.
"The sycamore, also, was sacred.
Peasants gather around them in rituals. In the Land of the Dead there was a sycamore in whose
branches the goddess Hathor lived; she leaned out of it giving
sustenance and water to deceased souls. In Memphis, Hathor's epithet was Lady of the Sycamore."
- Larry Gates,
Egyptian
Nature Mysticism
"That tree whose leaves are trembling:
it is yearning for something.
That tree so lovely to see acts as if it wants to flower: it is yearning for something."
- Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1395
"And you, how old are you?
I asked the maple tree:
While opening one hand,
- he started blushing."
- Georges Bonneau,
Le
Sensibilite Japonaise, 1935
"In an orchard there should be enough
to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground."
- James Boswell
"The patient. - The pine tree seems to listen,
the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, # 176.
"There are two trees, each yielding its own
fruit. One of them is negative....it grows from lack of
self-worth and its fruits are fear, anger, envy, bitterness, sorrow - and any other
negative emotion.
Then there is the tree of positive emotions. Its nutrients include self-forgiveness
and a correct self
concept. Its fruits are love, joy, acceptance, self-esteem, faith, peace...and other
uplifting emotions."
- Kathi's
Garden
"Because they are primeval, because they
outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch
the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt
about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should
learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence."
- Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989, p. 14.
"As I age
in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased with the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them."
- Wendell Berry, Planting Trees
"A tree does not move unless there is
wind."
- Afghan Proverb
"This solitary Tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed."
- William Wordsworth, Yardley Oak
"John Clare, in his poem To a
Fallen Elm, makes the tree a selfmark as well as a landmark."
- Tim Fulford, The
Politics of Trees
"Each time these blossoms open I recall the friend who
gave me the saplings,
And the times we used to stop to drink beneath his trees;
But those springs of twenty years ago are like a dream,
And the wine cups of those days are tea-bowls now."
- Kisei Reigen
"Time-honored,
beautiful, solemn and wise.
Noble, sacred and ancient
Trees reach the highest heavens and penetrate the deepest secrets of the earth.
Trees are the largest living beings on this planet.
Trees are in communion with the spiritual and the material.
Trees guard the forests and the sanctified places that must not be spoiled.
Trees watch over us and provide us with what we need to live on this planet.
Trees provide a focal point for meditation, enlightenment, guidance and
inspiration.
Trees have a soul and a spirit."
- Tree
Magick by Lavenderwater
"A few minutes ago every tree was excited,
bowing to the roaring
storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious
enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees
are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is
throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings,
while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No
wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more
they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the
farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."
- John Muir
"To be able to walk under the branches of a
tree that you have planted is really to feel you have
arrived with your garden. So far we are on the way: we can now stand beside ours."
- Mirabel Osler
"I was raised by the song
Of the murmuring grove
And loving I learned
Among Flowers."
- Friedrich Holderlin
"I am the Lorax, I speak for the
trees, for the trees have no tongues."
-
Dr. Suess
"Suburbia is where
the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
- Bill Vaughan
"Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by
the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and
other trees during the war of independence, “as symbols of growing freedom.” The
Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to
decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify
equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the
revolution of 1848."
- E. Cobham Brewer, The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1894
"Blue sky, golden cloud ...
What a feeling of forever!
The languid tree-tops
lithely remain mysterious.
A sign, you would think."
- Alberto Blanco, First Star
"A monk asked Joshu, "What is the
meaning of Bodidharma's coming to China?" Joshu said,
"The oak tree in the garden."
A monk asked Zhaozhou, "What is the living meaning of Zen?." Zhaozhou
said,
"The cypress tree in the yard."
"
- Case 37 from the Mumonkan (Wumenguan), A Traditional Collection of Zen Koan
'Joshu, Chao-chou, Zhaozhou' are different spellings of the name of
a Chinese Chan (Zen) Teacher
".... Stand and look upon the wood:
they behold the high tops of the cedar,
The entrance to the wood,
Where Humbaba goes in on lofty tread.
The ways are straight, and the path is wrought fair.
They see the cedar mount, the dwellings of gods, the sanctuary of the Irnim."
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
"Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu: "I have a big stinktree in
my garden. The trunk is so bent and knotty that nobody can get a good straight
plank out of it. The branches are so crooked you can't cut them up in any way that
makes sense. There it stands beside the road and no carpenter will even look at it.
Such is your teaching, Chuang - big and useless."
Chuang Tzu replied: "Have you ever watched the wildcat crouching, watching its prey?
This way it leaps, and that way,
high and low, and at last - it lands in the trap. Have you ever seen the yak?
It is great as a thundercloud, standing in his might.
Big? Sure. But, he can't catch mice! So for your big tree. No use?
Then plant it in the wasteland - in emptiness. Walk idly around it and rest
under it's shadow. No axe or saw prepares its end. No one will ever cut it
down. Useless? You should worry!"
- Chuang Tzu, The Useless Tree, circa 200 B.C.
"Except during the nine months before he draws his first
breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Tall thriving Trees confessed the
fruitful Mold:
The reddening Apple ripens here to Gold,
Here the blue Fig with luscious Juice overflows,
With deeper Red the full Pomegranate glows,
The Branch here bends beneath the weighty Pear,
and verdant Olives flourish round the Year."
- Homer
"Our ordinary mind always tries to
persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees."
- E.F. Schumacher
"Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience.
Knowing
grass, I can appreciate persistence."
-
Hal Borland, Countryman: A Summary of Belief
"Trees are the best monuments that a
man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn."
- Lord Orrery, 1749
"When I reflect that one man, armed only with his own physical and moral
resources, was able to cause
this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland, I am convinced that in spite of
everything, humanity is
admirable. But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of
benevolence that it
must have taken to achieve this result, I am taken with an immense respect for that old
and unlearned
peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God."
- Jean Giono, The Man Who
Planted Trees
A heartwarming story about the impact of one man, Elzeard Bouffier, who planted trees from 1900-1946, in the area where the Alps thrust down into Provence, France.
"They kill good trees to put out bad
newspapers."
- James G. Watt
"Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me."
- Robert Frost
"Beloved, gaze in thine
own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee."
- William Butler Yeats, The Two Trees
"Arbol que crece torsido jamas su
tronco se enderesa.
A tree that grows crooked will never straighten its trunk."
The Sunset Western Garden Book, Eight Edition, 2007. Over 8,000 plants described. Essential reference resource for all gardeners in the United States.
"A seed hidden in the heart of an
apple is an orchard invisible."
- A Welsh proverb
" Trees serve as homes for visiting devas
who do not manifest in earthly bodies,
but live in the fibers of the trunks and larger branches of the trees, feed from
the leaves and communicate through the tree itself. Some are permanently
stationed as guardians of sacred places."
- Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 117,
Nature Devas
"A tree never hits an automobile
except in self-defense."
- Author Unknown
"A garden without trees scarcely deserves
to be called a garden."
- Henry Ellacombe
"Trees are poems that earth writes
upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness."
- Kahlil Gibran
"Hmmm ... we chop down trees and chop up wood."
"-- Say it, no ideas but in things --
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident --
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained --
secret -- into the body of the light!"
- William Carlos Williams, Patterson, 1946, Book I, p. 7
"Wakening from the dreaming forest
there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind
as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood -
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent."
- Pablo Neruda
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"Someone's sitting in the shade today
because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
- Warren Buffett
"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.
A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy
reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love."
- Basil
"Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade."
- Andrew Marvell
"Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verde ramas.
Green I love you green. Green Wind. Green branches."
- Federico Garcia Lorca, 1899-1936
"The wonder is that we can see these
trees and not wonder more."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Evolution did not intend trees to
grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit."
- John Fowles
"We have nothing to fear and a great
deal to learn
from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which
without stint produces strengthening essences for
us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company
we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours."
- Marcel Proust, Pleasures and Regrets, 1896
"All it has experienced, tasted,
suffered:
The course of years, generations of animals,
Oppression, recovery, friendship of sun and - Wind
Will pour forth each day in the song
Of its rustling foliage, in the friendly
Gesture of its gently swaying crown,
In the delicate sweet scent of resinous
Sap moistening the sleep-glued buds,
And the eternal game of lights and
Shadows it plays with itself, content."
- Herman Hesse, 1877 - 1962
"Many a genius has been slow of
growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed."
- George H. Lewis, 1817 - 1878
"Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees."
- J. Willard Marriott
"Character is like a tree and
reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
- Abraham Lincoln
"The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not
adored as stone or tree;
they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies,
because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred,
the ganz andere or 'wholly other.' "
- Mircea Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
Trees - Quotes for Gardeners Part III
Spirit of Gardening Quotations
"You can't be suspicious of a tree, or
accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or
challenge the ideology of a violet."
- Hal Borland (1908-1978), Sundial of the Seasons,
1964
"As an instrument of planetary home
repair, it is hard to imagine anything as safe as a tree."
- Jonathan Weiner
"The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass,
speaks to me.
The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars,
the trail of the sun,
the strength of fire,
and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.
And my heart soars."
- Chief Dan George
"He who plants a tree, plants a
hope."
- Lucy Larcom, Plant a Tree
"Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now."
- General George P. Morris
Oaks of North America by Howard A. Miller, Samuel H. Lamb, 1984.
"A society grows great when old men
plant trees
whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
-
Greek Proverb
"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows
how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them,
can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach
undeterred
by particulars, the ancient law of life."
- Hermann Hesse, Wandering
"My lilac trees are old and tall;
I cannot reach their bloom at all.
They send their perfume over trees
And roof and streets, to find the bees."
- Lousie Driscoll, 1875 - 1957, My Garden
Is a Pleasant Place
"A fool sees not the same tree that a
wise man sees."
-
William Blake, Proverbs of Hell, 1790
"A man does not plant a tree for
himself, he plants it for posterity."
- Alexander Smith
"And so she comes to dream herself the
tree,
The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,
Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,
Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.
She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope
Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet."
- Hart Crane,
Abstract Garden, 1932
"And so she turns inward on herself
The breeze caressing her, brushing her smooth skin,
Her bright face gazing still. The wind
Whispering darkly secrets of her past.
She has no thought nor cares, nor words
Except to gently brush away the petals falling on her heart."
- Ken Morrill, Under the Tree
Whispers from the Woods: The Lore & Magic of Trees by Sandra Kynes, 2006.
"In the religion of the Medes and
Persians the cult of trees plays an important part, and with them, as with Assyrians, the symbol of eternal life was a tree with a stream at its roots. Another object of veneration was the sacred miracle tree, which within itself contained the seeds of all."
- M. L. Gothein, A History of Garden Art, 1928
"May my life be like a great
hospitable tree, and may weary wanderers find in me a rest."
- John Henry Jowett
Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History by Diana Wells, 2010
"I have always found thick woods a little
intimidating, for they are so secret and enclosed. You may seem alone but you are not, for there are always eyes watching you. All the wildlife of the woods, the insects, birds, and animals, are well aware of your presence no matter how softly you may tread, and they follow your every move although you cannot see them."
- Thalassa Cruso
"The Pacific Yew can be cut down and
processed to produce a potent
chemical, taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die... It seems an easy choice -- sacrifice the tree for a human life -- until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated."
- Al Gore
"Trees enrich our lives throughout the
year. They reassure us with the rustle of their leaves, give us shade to soothe our overheated bodies and they bring delight to us when we watch birds nest in their boughs. However, it is only during the fall that they wave flamboyant foliage that seems to demand our attention."
- Blue Ridge
Parkway: A Guide to Trees
"My heart is glad, my heart is high
With sudden ecstasy;
I have given back, before I die,
Some thanks for every lovely tree
That dead men grew for me."
- V. H. Friedlaender
"The woods are full of faeries!
The trees are all alive;
The river overflows with them,
See how they dip and dive!
What funny little fellows!
What dainty little dears!
They dance and leap, and prance and peep,
And utter fairy cheers!"
- Anonymous
"For in the true nature of things, if
we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."
- Martin Luther
"And on the banks, on both sides of
the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing."
- Ezekiel 47:12
"Sensing us, the trees tremble in
their sleep,
The living leaves recoil before our fires,
Baring to us war-charred and broken branches,
And seeing theirs, we for our own destruction weep."
- Kathleen Raine, London Trees
"There is always Music amongst the
trees in the Garden,
but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it."
- Minnie Aumonier
"There once was a man who said,
"God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
"Among archetypal images, the Sacred Tree
is one of the most widely know
symbols on Earth. There are few cultures in which the Sacred Tree does
not figure: as an image of the cosmos, as a dwelling place of gods or spirits,
as a medium of prophecy and knowledge, and as an agent of metamorphoses
when the tree is transformed into human or divine form or when it bears
a divine or human image as its fruit or flowers."
- Christopher and Tricia McDowell, The Sanctuary Garden,
1998, p 128
"Character
is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Here may I live what life I please,
Married and buried out of sight,
- Married to pleasure and buried to pain, -
Hidden away amongst scenes like these,
Under the fans of the chestnut trees;
Living my child-life over again,
With the further hope of a fallen delight,
Blithe as the birds and wise as the bees."
- Violet Fane, In Green Old Gardens, 1843
- 1905
"As the poet said, "only God can
make a tree," probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on."
- Woody Allen
Japanese Maples: Momiji and Keade by J. D. Vertrees and Peter Gregory, 2001.
"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree."
- Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, Trees
"What did the tree learn from the
earth
to be able to talk with the sky?"
- Pablo Neruda
Next Page: Trees - Quotes for Gardeners, Part II
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From January 1, 1999 through March 1, 2011
This webpage has been online since January 1999
Compiled by Karen Garofalo
and Mike Garofalo from Red
Bluff, California
E-Mail
Last Updated: March 1, 2011