Tree Quotes

Great talents are the most lovely
and often the most dangerous
fruits on the tree of humanity.
They hang upon the most slender twigs
that are easily snapped off.
- Carl Jung

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln

To know God, watch a butterfly return to the same tree -
after a year and a thousand miles.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One day Alice came to a fork in the road
and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
His responses was a question: "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
- Lewis Carroll

If you plan for a year, plant a seed.
If for ten years, plant a tree.
If for a hundred years, teach the people.
When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest.
When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.
- Kuan Chung

Our "Rainbows and Butterflies" are the small miracles of our life -
the little things that are so easy to overlook,
yet so awe inspiring when we take a moment
to notice and to pay attention.
Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures - large and small,
for the bright blue sky and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh,
for the touch of a hand and the whispered "I love you."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree
is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
- Burton Hills

Have you ever hugged a tree?
Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know
that it is not only that
you have hugged the tree
but that the tree also responds,
the tree also hugs you.
- Osho

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree
is connected with that of man.
- Henry David Thoreau

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
- Albert Einstein

Pause to appreciate the beauty around you.
Whether rainbow or butterfly,
mountain or tree, painting or poem -
whether crafted by nature or by a human hand -
beauty adds a magical element to life
that surpasses logic and science.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore.
There is always something to make you wonder
in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
- Albert Schweitzer

Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein

I am a plain ordinary magnificent creation of God,
just like every other plain ordinary
mountain, ocean, tree, animal, and human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I never saw a discontented tree.
They grip the ground as though they liked it,
and though fast rooted, they travel about as far as we do.
- John Muir

Be not like the sugarcane -
do not hold your sweetness inside.
Be like the fruit tree -
be generous with your best.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie (inspired by Tagore)

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
is no freedom for the tree.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Feel Unity with Spirit and All Creation
All things share the same breath the
beast, the tree, the man... the air
shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle [actually written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1972]

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.
- John Muir

Cloud Animals: Be a Child Again.
I remember warm summer afternoons,
laying in the shade of a maple tree in the back yard
of my Connecticut home watching the clouds for hours.
As those clouds formed dragons and foxes, clowns and angels,
I traveled across space and time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We are born believing.
A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Faith:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
...
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly
- Patrick Overton - from his book of poems: The Leaning Tree, 1975
[Widely mis-attributed to Barbara J. Winter, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and others]

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

Trees are the earth's endless effort
to speak to the listening heaven.
- Rabindranath Tagore

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed;
if in terms of ten years, plant trees;
if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.
- Confucius

Plant trees for your great-grandchildren -
for future generations.
Create the legacy of a better world.
Leave this world a better place than you found it.
Literally planting trees for
your great-grandchildren is a wonderful idea,
but far more important...
use this symbolism - this imagery -
to represent the kind of legacy
you want to leave to future generations.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Every creature is better alive than dead,
men and moose and pine trees,
and he who understands it aright
will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
- Henry David Thoreau

I thank you God for this most amazing day,
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and for the blue dream of sky
and for everything which is natural,
which is infinite, which is yes.
- e. e. cummings

Today's acorns grow into the oak trees of thirty years hence.
But what acorns are we sowing today?
Imagine what an acorn-sized bit of prejudice or hatred would grow into.
Imagine what an acorn-sized bit of pollution can become.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how fast and far!
- John Muir

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

We need to find God, and he cannot
be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence.
See how nature - trees, flowers, grass-
grows in silence; see the stars,
the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
- Mother Teresa

We return thanks to our mother,
the earth, which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams
which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines
for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters,
the beans and squashes, which give us life.
We return thanks to the bushes and trees,
which provide us with fruit.
We return thanks to the wind,
which, moving the air, has banished diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and the stars,
which have given us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to our grandfather He-no,
that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles,
and has given us his rain.
We return thanks to the sun,
that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit,
in whom is embodied all goodness,
and who directs all things for the good of his children.
- Iroquois traditional

God has cared for these trees,
saved them from drought, disease, avalanches,
and a thousand tempests and floods.
But he cannot save them from fools.
- John Muir

Saying goodbye doesn't mean anything.
It's the time we spent together that matters,
not how we left it.
- Trey Parker

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Could we see when and where we are to meet again,
we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
- Ouida

Farewell My Friend
It was beautiful as long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
I have no regrets whatsoever
save the pain I'll leave behind.
Those dear hearts who love and care...
And the strings pulling at the heart and soul...
The strong arms that held me up
When my own strength let me down.
At every turning of my life
I came across good friends,
Friends who stood by me,
Even when the time raced me by.
Farewell, farewell my friends
I smile and bid you goodbye.
No, shed no tears for I need them not
All I need is your smile.
If you feel sad do think of me
for that's what I'll like
when you live in the hearts
of those you love, remember then
you never die.
- Gitanjali Ghei

Never say goodbye when you still want to try,
never give up when you still feel you can't take it.
Never say you don't love the person anymore
when you can't let go.
- Anonymous

A man never knows how to say goodbye;
a woman never knows when to say it.
- Helen Rowland

A best friend is like a four leaf clover,
hard to find and lucky to have.
- Anonymous

Friends love misery, in fact.
Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky
or too successful or too pretty,
our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
- Erica Jong

For those men who, sooner or later, are lucky enough
to break away from the pack, the most intoxicating moment
comes when they cease being bodies in other men's command
and find that they control their own time,
when they learn their own voice and authority.
- Theodore H. White

I have a very pessimistic view of life.
You should know this about me if we're gonna go out.
You know, I - I feel that life is -
is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
Those are the two categories, you know.
The - the horrible would be like, um,
I don't know, terminal cases, you know,
and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life.
It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else.
That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life -
you should be thankful that you're miserable
because you're very lucky to be miserable.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall

Life is best when I wish neither to hurry the future nor to slow it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Simply do your best, and you will avoid
self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
- don Miguel Ruiz

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller

A common denominator of all religions is that
they have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
- Carl Jung

In the practice of tolerance,
one's enemy is the best teacher.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Things turn out best for the people
who make the best of the way things turn out.
- Art Linkletter

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you,
whose presence calls forth your best.
- Epictetus

The success of a project is best predicted
by the enthusiasm of its participants.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Jonathan Huie jlh(at)jlhuie(dot)com - About & Disclosure

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Tree Quotes

Daily Quotes to Live By