Quotes

Please enjoy these tree quotes that I have compiled from a variety of sources. Do you have a favorite tree quote? Share it in the comments below.

"Every craggy and gnarled tree has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it."

- Douglas Hyde

“We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees.”

- Qwatsinas

"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."

- William Blake.

"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

"Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters."
- Saint Bernard de Clairvaux

"The forest makes your heart gentle. You become one with it... No place for greed or anger there."
- Pha Pachak

"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 

“The Great Bear Rainforest is Canada's Amazon, and today's announcement is British Columbia's gift to the planet.” - Merran Smith, 2006

"Cortes Islanders want protection of remnant old growth in whatever form it is found including provision for connectivity and mature forest areas left to become old growth." - Noba Anderson

"If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make everything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture." - Henry Beston

"The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more..."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If there is any wisdom running through my life now, in my walking on this earth, it came from listening in the Great Silence to the stones, trees, space, the wild animals, to the pulse of all life as my heartbeat." - Vijali Hamilton  Vijali Hamilton

"We inter-breath with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans.  They are part of our own body." - Thich Nhat Hanh

"Your deepest roots are in nature.  No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation." - Charles Cook

"If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make everything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture." - Henry Beston

"i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes" e.e. cummings

"The forest makes your heart gentle.  You become one with it... No place for greed or anger there." - Pha Pachak

"Our intent in redesigning the forest is to permanently and drastically shorten the life of the trees. In so doing, the entire dynamics of how the forest functions is being altered without the slightest idea of how such actions will affect the sustainability of the forest. To maximize the harvest of wood fiber today, we gamble with the existence of the forests of tomorrow."
-Chris Maser


"The lumbermen...regarded forest devastation as normal and second growth as a delusion of fools....And as for sustained yield, no such idea had ever entered their heads.

The few friends the forest had were spoken of, when they were spoken of at all, as impractical theorists, fanatics, or "denudatics," more or less touched in the head.

What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American that the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating."

- Gifford Pinchot, 1st Chief of the US Forest Service, 1905-1910

"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." - Kim Taplin


"A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree." - Deng Ming-Dao

"We can only make headway towards solving the ongoing conflict between conservation and industrial resource extraction by having a personal connection with ancient forests." -Randy Stoltman 

"We stand in awe, knowing that many of these heritage trees are over 1000 years old, and knowing that this magnificent forest is the result of natural processes since the glaciers retreated about 14,000 years ago."  - Bristol Foster


Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children…let us turn to them and say, “This you inherit; guard it well, for it is far more precious than money, and once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.”
-- Ansel Adams

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit."  ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

"Here, sown by the Creator's hand,
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand;
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.
The greatest of Earth's living forms...
God stands before you in these trees."
- Joseph Strauss, designer of the Golden Gate Bridge

"A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit." - Greek prophecy

"When the trees are gone the sky will fall and we and the salmon will be no more." - Lummi prophecy

"The Big Tree is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things." - John Muir

"A tree is a wonderful living organism which gives shelter, food, warmth and protection to all living things. It even gives shade to those who wield an axe to cut it down"
– Buddha.

"(In the ancient forest) we better feel the flow of life and our place in the universe. . . In less than 20 years any heritage tree that is not protected will most likely be logged. And we shall never be able to get any of them back." - Bristol Foster

"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off." - Willa Cather

Treebeard: [about orcs] They come with fire, they come with axes... gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning. Destroyers and usurpers, curse them. - Lord of the Rings

"Trees are your best antiques." - Alexander Smith

'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

"Getting people into the wilderness for a transcendent experience empowers people for years, if not for their entire lives." - Paul George

"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

"I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi." - Derrick Jensen