The Elders Speak:
On Trees

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing gives more yet asks for less than a tree; particularly an apple tree
John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed

A woodland in full color is as awesome as a forest fire; but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.
Hal Borland

A tree does not move unless there is wind.
Afghan Proverb

As an instrument of planetary home repair, it is hard to imagine anything as safe as a tree.
Jonathan Weiner

Does a dragon still sing from within a withered tree?
Dogen

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

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!"
Joseph Campbell

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

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.
Hermann Hesse, Wandering

The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
Chinese Proverb

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

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
Bill Vaughan

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer, Trees

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trees are great travelers. Not in the sense of space, but of time. From their rooted home, they see the seasons drift slowly by.
Keith C. Heidorn

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Robert Frost, Birch Trees

What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?
Pablo Neruda

Go to the winter woods: listen there, look, watch, and "the dead months" will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest.
Fiona Macleod, Where the Forest Murmurs

Trees are happy for no reason...
Osho

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
George Washington Carver

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods
Robert Frost, Spring Pools

Going to the woods is going home.
John Muir

Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

...certain trees have an emotional value far in excess of any other consideration.
Sigurd F. Olson

I have never entered a wood but what I hear footsteps in the leaves tiptoeing away
Loren Eiseley, The Lost Notebooks