Quotes
Quotes about Trees
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing.
I have done the state some service, and they know 't.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then, must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.
Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon 't.
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,--
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies:
They fall successive, and successive rise.
Note 9.La vray science et le vray étude de l'homme c'est l'homme (The true science and the true study of man is man).--Charron: De la Sagesse, lib. i. chap. 1.
Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.--Plato: Phædrus.
A brotherhood of venerable trees.
Oh for a seat in some poetic nook,
Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!
The stately homes of England,--
How beautiful they stand,
Amid their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 't is little joy
To know I 'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees.
Within the sober realm of leafless trees,
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper, in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.
What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
Hark, below, the many-voiced earth,
The chanting of the old religious trees,
Rustle of far-off waters, woven sounds
Of small and multitudinous lives awake,
Peopling the grasses and the pools with joy,
Uttering their meaning to the mystic night!
Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom,
Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom,
Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,
And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?
The axe is laid unto the root of the trees.
Bankruptcy sits beside us, walks the strees, takes coffee in the cafe, chats and eats, a trusted friend, who never lets you down
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
