The Tree Quotes

Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There - that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one little girl who is looking out of the window - I am afraid she thinks I am out there somewhere - perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.]
- Mark Twain

...the quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened,
- J R R Tolkien

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees.
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
- J R R Tolkien

I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.
- J R R Tolkien

Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
- J R R Tolkien

I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.
- J R R Tolkien

Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the Little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside.
- J R R Tolkien

Some fish were jumping up the beach and into the tree, which struck me as an odd thing for a fish to do, but I tried not to be judgmental about it. I was feeling pretty raw about my own species, and not much inclined to raise a quizzical eyebrow at others. The fish could play about in trees as much as they liked if it gave them pleasure, so long as they didn't try and justify themselves or tell each other it was a malign god who made them play in trees.
- Douglas Adams

I think what you notice most when you haven't been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.
- Mitch Albom

Tell me about your family, I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.
- Mitch Albom

By now, the morning sun was just over the horizon and it came at me like a sidearm pitch between the houses of my old neighborhood. I shielded my eyes. This being early October, there were already piles of leaves pushed against the curbmore leaves than I remembered from my autumns hereandless open space in the sky. I think what you notice most when you haven't been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.
- Mitch Albom

And they will return one day knowing the miracle of the heavens and of all the world. God knew what he was doing when he drew their attention to the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he hadn't wanted them to eat it, he would never have mentioned it.
- Paulo Coelho

There's got to be a moment when that baby [flying] squirrel looks from the end of one branch to the tree six feet away and thinks twice about making a leap. Falling in love is no different; it's the moment that we close our eyes and throw away everything that seems reasonable and hope to God there's someone or something waiting to catch us on the other side.
- Jodi Picoult

Jeez! I thought you said you were just gonna set up the tree? It looks like Santa shit Christmas in here!
- Toni Aleo

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.
- Christopher Alexander

What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.
- Samuel Alexander

Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.
- William Alexander

Because we would not wear any clothes because it was so hot and the windows open and the swallows flying over the roofs of the houses and when it was dark afterward and you went to the window very small bats hunting over the houses and close down over the trees and we would drink capri and the door locked and it hot and only a sheet and the whole night and we would both love each other all night in the hot night in Milan. That was how it ought to be.
- Ernest Hemingway

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.
- Ernest Hemingway

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.
- Ernest Hemingway

Then as I was getting up to the Closerie des Lilas with the light on my old friend, the statue of Marshal Ney with his sword out and the shadows of the trees on the bronze, and he alone there and nobody behind him and what a fiasco he'd made of Waterloo, I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be and I stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer before going home to the flat over the sawmill.
- Ernest Hemingway

Sitting at the old patio table she'd cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She'd come here with too many expectations.
- Sarah Addison Allen

It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.
- Alexandre Dumas

(...) the tree forsakes not the flower: the flower falls from the tree.
- Alexandre Dumas

Livia, when I count to three, I want to you to run into the trees," Blake whispered. "And keep running. Promise me." He sounded calm and determined.
"Absolutely not." Livia turned from their escape route. "I'm never leaving you."
"Livia, please." Blake squeezed her hand and tried to force her in the right direction.
She squeezed right back.
- Debra Anastasia

Blake sat down as well, facing her. The moon now claimed the sky as hers, surfacing slowly over the trees. Blake tested her hand-drawn keys, and in his head he heard a full piano play his heart out loud for her.
Livia clapped when he was done. She put her hand behind his head and pulled his lips close. "I think I heard it," she whispered before kissing him.
- Debra Anastasia

The sun sifted through the trees around the platform, and Blake stood proudly in its curtain of light. It would be retreating from him this time. He walked over to his old spot in the shade with victory in his step. He'd been trapped there for so long. He shook his head and returned to the sun's rays, amazed at how powerful that simple act made him feel.
- Debra Anastasia

A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.
Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.
- Laurie Halse Anderson

Make it bend trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
- Laurie Halse Anderson

Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
- Laurie Halse Anderson

Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
- Laurie Halse Anderson

People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born.
And I am turning into a vampire.
- M T Anderson

It was a cold
day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and
hills.

- Sherwood Anderson

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.
- Sherwood Anderson

On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
- Sherwood Anderson

Season of Joy:
She asked me when the season of joy was supposed to end & I said I didn't really think there was an exact date, so we left the tree up till June that year.
- Brian Andreas

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

At least I don't look like a Christmas tree."
"You look like the star atop the tree.
- Jennifer L Armentrout

The evening light was like honey in the trees
When you left me and walked to the end of the street
Where the sunset abruptly ended.
The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself
To the fragile forget-me-not flower.
You climbed aboard.
Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones,
Dreams I had, including suicide,
Puff out the hot-air balloon now.
It is bursting, it is about to burst
- John Ashbery

No!
I scream through the bars. Over the trees."No!"
Do not let her leave.
Do not let her leave that room!
He's not coming.
- Jay Asher

For reasons he couldn't understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees.
- Melina Marchetta

My mother, unlike yours, never exchanged sexual favors for a piece of silver," he said, addressing the first insult by banging the boy's head against the trunk of the tree. "And," he said with another resounding thump, "although I'm very familiar with that part of the female body, I take offense at being labeled one.
- Melina Marchetta

All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.
- Melina Marchetta

Pass then through this little space of time comfortably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.
- Marcus Aurelius

Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination.
- Jane Austen

George Washington chopped down the tree, and then he threw away the money. Do you understand? He was telling us an essential truth. Namely, that money doesn't grow on trees. This is what made our country great, Peter. Now George Washington's picture is on every dollar bill. There is an important lesson to be learned from all this.
- Paul Auster

Nothing the desert produces expresses it better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas.
- Mary Austin

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
- Saint Teresa Of Avila

Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?
- Richard Bach

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

We are more than our feelings. Feelings are like leaves and flowers on the tree of our being. They are the first to dance in the breeze, the first to blossom in springtime, the first to sparkle in the rain. But come the cold and frost, we discover that the bare branches of our values and the roots of our traditions are the structure we stand on.
- Manjul Bajaj

And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it, what I'd give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.
- Kage Baker

The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it - is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, 'trees creak through the long night.' The long night - what is it? Trees creaking. There wasn't anything that tied life's moments together, except life. And when it was gone?
- Jesse Ball

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirp by the wall, and like a blue thread a long, thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming.
- Oscar Wilde

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
- Oscar Wilde

...I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.
- Oscar Wilde

Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out the landing window, there--hanging between the bare branches of the trees--was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man's smile.
- Clive Barker

(The tree bend over. Suddenly, a hiss and a meow sounded an instant before two cats darted off across the backyard.)
Look, Lanie, it's Mr. Tomcat come to save me from my celibacy. Oh, help me, Moon Mistress. Whatever am I to do with the attentions of such an unwanted suitor! Help me quick, before he kills me with my allergies. (Grace)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.
- Lewis Carroll

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.
- Charles Baudelaire

He stood up, put the tree back under the grow light. 'There. That's what's going to happen to us. It's called grafting. Taking something from one place and fixing it to another until they grow together. We didn't start from the same tree, but we're going to grow together like we did.
- Joan Bauer

I watched that plant in the office every day.
Watered it; misted it. I loved thinking about it like G.T. said, but part of me was worried the tree surgery wouldn't take. Something would go wrong and then Id be stuck with a metaphor that couldn't go the distance.
- Joan Bauer

If I stand here, I can see the Little Red Haired girl when she comes out of her house... Of course, if she sees me peeking around this tree, she'll think I'm the dumbest person in the world... But if I don't peek around the tree, I'll never see her... Which means I probably AM the dumbest person in the world... which explains why I'm standing in a batch of poison oak.
- Charles M Schulz

What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. "Always, always," it sighed, "faithful beyond any man's deserving. I will keep the color of your eyes when no other in the world remembers your name. There is no immortality but a tree's love.
- Peter S Beagle

We were raised without movies, theater or music. We had only nature, the hills, the trees. When I got on the set of 'Manon,' I wasn't star-struck because I didn't know what a star was.
- Emmanuelle Beart

In the forest, while the others settled the baskets and dishtowels under the trees, Jacques helped Michel rub down the horses and fasten around their necks the gray-brown canvas nose bags, in which the horses chomped their jaws, opening and closing their large brotherly eyes or chasing away a fly with an impatient hoof.
- Albert Camus

Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,' she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. 'What nice dreams they must have!
- L M Montgomery

At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day...
- Anne Sexton

There was something about his eyesthe color of the periwinkle that grew at the base of the trees in the Meadow, such a deep bluethat made me feel as if he could see my dearest wishes, my darkest thoughts, before they made themselves known to me. And that simply by seeing them, he was also giving me permission to follow them. Perhaps he was even showing me the way.
- Melanie Benjamin

Nona leans forward, "I had-a love."
I nod.
"You know how it was? It was like-a trees. Oak and elm." Her voice has been soft, like it was lost in memory, but now she stares at me, her eyes narrowed, and she makes a fist and pounds the side of her chair. "The roots, they bound-a together, but the trees, they are free. You know what it's-a mean?
- Elizabeth Berg

I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It's a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That's why I want to write a book.
- Haruki Murakami

Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.
- Haruki Murakami

Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
- David Letterman

...it charms
mere eyesight to believe
The nearest thing not trees
Is the sky, into which
The trees reach, opening
their luminous new leaves...
and thought finds rest
beneath a brightened tree
In which, unseen, a warbler
feeds and sings. His song's
Small shapely melody
Comes down irregularly,
as all light's givings come.
Sabbaths 1999 III
- Wendell Berry

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection.
- Wendell Berry

This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.
- Wendell Berry

I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time.
- Joseph Beuys

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
- Ambrose Bierce

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
- E M Forster

The sun was already declining and each of the trees held a premonition of night.
- E M Forster

Sacredness and profanity and prayers and wishes: they're all held together by the broken limbs of this dead tree, raking the night sky with its blackened branches. We are so small, the two of us. The tree and sky are so large and grand. We could fail so easily, fall before we've begun to rise.
- Elora Bishop

She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn.
- Holly Black

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

Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
- William Blake

I don't believe in things like that - fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It's old-fashioned.'
'Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then,' said Bessie. 'Because we not only believe in the Faraway Tree and love our funny friends there, but we go to see them too - and we visit the lands at the top of the Tree as well!
- Enid Blyton

But the trees seemed to know me. They whispered among themselves and beckoned me nearer. And looking around, I noticed the other small trees and wild plants and grasses had sprung up under the protection of the trees we had placed there.
The trees had multiplied! They were moving. In one small corner of the world, Grandfather's dream was coming true and the trees were moving again.
- Ruskin Bond

Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The tree on the mountain takes whatever the weather brings. If it has any choice at all, it is in putting down roots as deeply as possible.---Each New Day
- Corrie Ten Boom

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this. When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise, in such a night..
- William Shakespeare

The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.
- Ray Bradbury

...Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping it's life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.
- Ray Bradbury

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
- Carl Sandburg

As the three of them walked home from the trees, nobody needed to say it, but Ama knew. They had questioned their friendship. They had searched and wondered, looking for a sign. And all along they'd had their trees. You couldn't wear them. You couldn't pass them around. They offered no fashion advantage. But they had roots. They lived.
- Ann Brashares

Our mouths and bodies speak for us in a new language as the trees shake loose a rain of petals that stick to our slickness like skins we will wear forever. And just like that, I am changed.
- Libba Bray

The sun flickers through the trees and shines upon the faces of the men lined up on the porches. Soldiers no more, just ordinary men who, by the grace of God, were spared to tell their stories
- Nancy B Brewer

If I be just a page torn out of a book,
May I sail forever over the oceans blue,
Float over the treetops and the mountains too,
Drift across the valleys and the flowers look,
Until at last, I rest and kiss the morning dew.
-Nancy B. Brewer
- Nancy B Brewer

The sun had just slipped behind the trees and evening cast its dark, smoky shadow. ---from Lizzie After the War---www.nancybrewer.com kindle/amazon/nook
- Nancy B Brewer

She seemed to have waited so long to hear those words that for a moment the earth stood still, and the moon, the trees, the grotesque shadows across the heath, became in that instant transfixed in her memory. How shall I bear this exquisite happiness? It is too much: it will destroy me.
- Vera Brittain

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!
- John F Kennedy

At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
- Rudyard Kipling

Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
- Rudyard Kipling

Outside the hospital, I squinted in the harsh morning sunlight. I could hear birds chirping in the tree, but even though I searched for them, they remained hidden from me.
- Nicholas Sparks

An ordinary beginning, something that would have been forgotten had it been anyone but her. But as he shook her hand and met those striking emerald eyes, he knew before he'd taken his next breath that she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but never find again. She seemed that good, that perfect, while a summer wind blew through the trees.
- Nicholas Sparks

And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love.
- Nicholas Sparks

Now I know why you have always desired to see Andilain at this time of year. The sweet fragrance of the trees blossoming remind me of the soft skin at your neck. If we should ever travel here I will insist on taking a carriage. You know how I detest riding horses and after two days my backside would be grateful if I never beheld a saddle again.
- Jaime Buckley

Lik the tree falling in the forest," says Ira.
"Huh?"
"You know, the old question - if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it really make a sound?"
Howie considers this. "Is it a pine forest, or oak?"
"What's the difference?"
"Oak is a much denser wood; it's more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.
- Neal Shusterman

What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are cast by objects and people. There is the shadow of my sword. But there are also shadows of trees and living creatures. Would you like to denude the earth of all the trees and all the living beings in order to satisfy your fantasy of rejoicing in the naked light?
- Mikhail Bulgakov

I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.
- Wynn Bullock

I used to listen to it all the time when I was little and thinking about grown-up things. I would go to my bedroom window and stare at my reflection in the glass and the trees behind it and just listen to the song for hours. I decided then that when I met someone I thought was as beautiful as the song, I should give it to that person. And I didn't mean beautiful on the outside. I meant beautiful in all ways.
- Stephen Chbosky

I paused finally and watched the trees for slashes of light, but saw none. As my heart settled and my ears became less occupied I listened and heard nothing but the thready pulse of the night. And I sensed that the hunt was over. I'd been prey and now I was not. Prey knows this. Prey knows when it has escaped.
- Augusten Burroughs

We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech--but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun...
- A S Byatt

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.
- George Byron

Sorrow is knowledge: They who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, the tree of knowledge is not that of life.
- George Byron

The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted.
- George Byron

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.
- Lord Byron

We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
- Italo Calvino

That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working now inside him unsatisfied, making him long for a more intimate link, a relationship which would bind him to each leaf and twig and feather and flutter.
- Italo Calvino

I ask to be made beautiful like the trees are beautiful, each growing according to a unique plan. Lop off a limb and and the tree will accommodate it's loss, still growing and still beautiful. It is my hope to be able to flourish in a similar fashion, taking on the shape and dimensions that is intended for me.
- Julia Cameron

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
- Gilbert K Chesterton

, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always
have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could
never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because
it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it.
- Gilbert K Chesterton

I'm an introvert... I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.
- Audrey Hepburn

That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds
- Orson Scott Card

Are you,
Are you,
Coming to the tree,
Where they strung up a man they said murdered three?
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
If we met up at midnight
In the hanging tree.
- Suzanne Collins

That should have been my strategy! By the time I've worked through the emotions of surprise, admiration, anger, jealousy, and frustration, I'm watching that reddish mane of hair disappear into the trees well out of shooting range.
- Suzanne Collins

The realization that I'd have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.
- Suzanne Collins

Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here.
No stranger would let it be if we met up
At midnight in the hanging tree.
- Suzanne Collins

Beetee is still messing round the tree, doing I don't know what. At one point he snaps off a sliver of bark, joins us, and throws it against the force field. It bounces back and lands on the ground, glowing. In a few moments it returns to its original color. "Well, that explains a lot," says Beetee. I look at Peeta and can't help biting my lip to keep from laughing since it explains absolutely nothing to anyone but Beetee.
- Suzanne Collins

Eyes on the forest, not on the trees.
- Suzanne Collins

But I feel as if I did know Rue, and she'll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the Mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim.
- Suzanne Collins

We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.
- Pablo Casals

Get your ass back on the tree, Jayne, I just lost the mojo.
- Elle Casey

I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.
- Mary Cassatt

No matter how many leaves would the tree of your soul have in front of the intense heat in the words of Time in this world, they can never shade the eternity lost inside you.
- Sorin Cerin

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.
- Aime Cesaire

My vanity was flattered by having been mistaken for our revered sovereign. I ordered a banquet to be got ready for the following evening, under the trees before my house, and invited the whole town.
- Adelbert Von Chamisso

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.
- William Ellery Channing

I was in an empty field when I came across a tree. This tree was full of white blossoms and succulent cherries. The sun was shining and the breeze was blowingeverything was lovely. I looked back at the tree and its pure white blossoms were stained with blood. I gazed down in front of me, in horror, as a wooden cross marked the place of a small dirty mound.
- Katlyn Charlesworth

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest.
- Stephen King

Outside, a gusty October breeze was combing leaves from the trees and sending them across her backyard in colorful skitters.
- Stephen King

Thin clouds form, and the shadows lengthen out. They have no breadth, as summer shadows have; there are no leaves on the trees or fat clouds in the sky to make them thick. They are gaunt, mean shadows that bite the ground like teeth.
As the sun nears the horizon, its benevolent yellow begins to deepen, to become infected, until it glares an angry inflamed orange. It throws a variegated glow over the horizon.
- Stephen King

Shadows were too black, and when a breeze stirred the trees, the shadows changed in a disquieting way.
- Stephen King

As the twig is bent the tree inclines.
- Virgil

I will be gone from here and sing my songs/ In the forest wilderness where the wild beasts are,/ And carve in letters on the little trees/ The story of my love, and as the trees/ Will grow letters too will grow, to cry/ In a louder voice the story of my love.
- Virgil

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
- Anton Chekhov

When your heart's gratitude comes to the fore, when you become all gratitude, this gratitude is like a flow, a flow of consciousness. When your consciousness is flowing, feel that this gratitude-flow is like a river that is watering the root of the tree and the tree itself. It is always through gratitude that your consciousness-river will grow and water the perfection-tree inside you.
- Sri Chinmoy

When you really have something to offer to the world, then you can become truly humble. A tree when it has no fruit to offer, remains erect. But when the tree is laden with fruit, it bends down. If you are all pride and ego, then nobody will be able to get anything worthwhile from you. When you have genuine humility, it is a sign that you have something to offer to mankind.
- Sri Chinmoy

In between your failure-tree
And your triumph-tree,
The tree that is growing
Is known as your patience-tree.
- Sri Chinmoy

I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe?
- Kate Chopin

I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
Quartet of crickets chime in for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings, would you strum on mine?
- Owl City

There's a realm above the trees
Where the lost are finally found
Touch your feathers to the breeze
And leave the ground.
- Owl City

I'll be out of my mind
and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon.
So let's spend the afternoon
in a cold hot air balloon.
Leave your jacket behind.
Lean out and touch the tree tops over town.
I can't wait to kiss the ground wherever we touch back down.
- Owl City

Raindrops felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers...the black trunks of the trees were like iron bars against the gray of gathering pools. Radigan
- Louis L Amour

Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.
- Arthur C Clarke

They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the winds slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square. Yes but these are the same portents that precede lunchtime, frankly.
- Chris Cleave

The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror.
- David Clement Davies

You could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try
- David Levithan

and the sad notes floated out to the
patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly
- Hunter S Thompson

If you thought hard enough, he'd always considered, you could work out everything. The wind, for example. It had always puzzled him until the day he'd realized that it was caused by all the trees waving about.
- Terry Pratchett

A king of a kingdom no one fucking knows about! I'm the tree in the forest that silently falls--when no one is around to be crushed! [Lothaire, Enemy of Old]
- Kresley Cole

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.
- Colette

I wasn't going to get such a nice car - I was going to get a cute little hybrid or something, keep the trees happy - but then my grandfather died, and it was all: retail therapy!
- Chris Colfer

The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.
- Joseph Conrad

Apparently, in addition to muscles, Nate had an inner squirrel. He didn't have any trouble balancing on the tree, whereas I felt like I could fall out anytime.
- Eileen Cook

God planted the seeds of all the trees," continued Hetty, after a moment's pause, "and you see to what a height and shade they have grown! So it is with the Bible. You may read a verse this year, and forget it, and it will come back to you a year hence, when you least expect to remember it.
- James F Cooper

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.
- Marcelene Cox

I take my hands off the break and let go. The trees and the fences mess together and the concrete could be the sky and the sky could be the concrete and the factories spread out before me like a light-scattered dream.
- Cath Crowley

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
- E E Cummings

But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.
- Virginia Woolf

Here we slept," she says.
And he adds, "Kisses without number."
"Waking in the morning -"
"Silver between the trees -"
"Upstairs -"
"In the garden -"
"When summer came -"
"In winter snowtime -"
The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
- Virginia Woolf

Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees,... one's happiness, one's reality?
- Virginia Woolf

Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.
- Virginia Woolf

Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.
- Virginia Woolf

The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpended the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a fingerprint of a shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.
- Virginia Woolf

Sometimes, one trembling star comes in the clear sky and makes me think the world beautiful and we maggots deforming even the trees with our lusts.
- Virginia Woolf

She tapped on the window with her embossed hairbrush. They were too far off to hear. The drone of the trees was in their ears; the chirp of birds; other incidents of garden life, inaudible, invisible to her in the bedroom, absorbed them. Isolated on a green island, hedged about with snowdrops, laid with a counterpane of puckered silk, the innocent island floated under her window. Only George lagged behind.
- Virginia Woolf

All our wisdom is stored in the trees.
- Santosh Kalwar

I felt all the ways in which this world seemed so, so enormous--the height of the trees, the hush and tick of the forest, the shift of the sunlight and shadows--but also so, so removed.
- Emily M Danforth

You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice.
- Edwidge Danticat

To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.
- Elizabeth David

You're here," he said simply.
"Do I know you?" I asked, which came out more haughtily than I had intended.
"You will," he answered, kicking off the tree and walking toward me. "After all, you're wearing my locket. And I've been waiting for you.
- Delilah S Dawson

And so much depends, I told Augustus, upon a blue sky cut open by the branches of the trees above. So much depends upon the transparent G-tube erupting from the gut of the blue-lipped boy. So much depends upon the observer of the universe.
- John Green

Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
- Indra Devi

When he looked over, Emma had her head tipped back against the tree, and was humming as she watched the clouds move through the branches. Peter realized then how alone they each were. It was just that now they were alone together.
- Jennifer E Smith

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.
- Annie Dillard

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]
- Annie Dillard

It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time but that it is too late for us. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no whit less enlightnment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree.
- Annie Dillard

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
- Franz Kafka

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.
- Franz Kafka

Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms because our voices weren't enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt happy. If you mix your voice with others' voices, you feel as though you're caught on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann)
- Franz Kafka

The garden has wrapped itself in autumn haze. An unusual autumn, lacking that thrill of vegetal warmth when the sap is still alive and holds up the trees, drunk on solar gold. It is the sorrowful climax of a summer's drought. Never before was I so struck by the cancerous emaciation in a garden. The leaves started turning yellow in July and began falling, like a dance of prematurely withered bodies.
- Emil Dorian

Before you there lie the Steppes, my darlingonly the Steppes, the naked Steppes, the Steppes that are as bare as the palm of my hand. There there live only heartless old women and rude peasants and drunkards. There the trees have already shed their leaves. There abide but rain and cold.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When I reached the tree I noticed it also had a name on it -- Painted Tree was clear in the tarnished metal plaque.
Book II - If I Could Only Sparkle
- Judith Victoria Douglas

Granny sat down on the step and stared off into the trees. That girl right there, she was my only child. I have lost two husbands, one by death, the other by divorce, and I have lost my parents and my brothers and sisters. But nothing ever pierced me to the core like that little girl's dying. I know it wasn't your daddy's fault. I know I messed up by filling a report to Social Services. Is that what you want to here? Is that what it takes for you not to be mad at me?
- Frances O Roark Dowell

A strong wind sang sadly as it bent the trees in front of the Hall. A half moon shone through the dark, flying clouds on to the wild and empty moor.
- Arthur Conan Doyle

A painting is more than the sum of its parts,' he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow by itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you've got magic.
- Wendelin Van Draanen

A painting is more then the sum of it's parts. A cow by itself is just A cow. A meadow by itself is just grass, flowers. And the sun picking through the trees, is just a beam of light. But you put them all together and it can be magic.
- Wendelin Van Draanen

She tried to walk softly and wished the trees wouldn't stare at her so.
- Diane Duane

As I watched the pulsing fire among the trees and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices, forming an intricate pattern of sound, I knew that someday I would have to return or be haunted forever by the beauty and mystery that is Africa.
- Gerald Durrell

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
- Henry Miller

Walkin' through the leaves fallin' from the trees, Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees..
- Bob Dylan