Trees are the earth's endless effort
to speak to the listening heaven.
- Rabindranath Tagore
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
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
- Winston Churchill
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
We are born believing.
A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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)
To know God, watch a butterfly return to the same tree -
after a year and a thousand miles.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Fear is the root of the tree of suffering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
- Albert Einstein
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree
is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
- Burton Hills
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
- Khalil Gibran
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)
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
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
Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
is no freedom for the tree.
- Rabindranath Tagore
A tree that is unbending, is easily broken.
- Lao Tzu
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
I am a plain ordinary magnificent creation of God,
just like every other plain ordinary
mountain, ocean, tree, animal, and human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree
is connected with that of man.
- Henry David Thoreau
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
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
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
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
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
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
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]
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
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]
Saying goodbye doesn't mean anything.
It's the time we spent together that matters,
not how we left it.
- Trey Parker
A man never knows how to say goodbye;
a woman never knows when to say it.
- Helen Rowland
Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
- Erica Jong
Every goodbye is the birth of a memory.
- Dutch Proverb
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
Could we see when and where we are to meet again,
we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
- Ouida
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
- W. C. Fields
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits
and then complain that he's not the man she married?
- Barbra Streisand
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
It's not as great a day for the bride as she thinks.
She's not marrying the best man.
- Anonymous
No man is truly married until he understands
every word his wife is NOT saying.
- Anonymous
There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman -
before marriage and after marriage.
- Anonymous
In order to be happy with a man,
you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot
and not try to understand her at all.
- Helen Rowland
Barf: I'm a mog: half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!
- the movie Spaceballs (1987)
One cannot have everything the way he would like it.
A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment,
anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.
- Mark Twain
You can lead a man to Congress,
but you can't make him think.
- Milton Berle
Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy,
the first question I ask myself is:
is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
- Rita Rudner
Do not marry a man to reform him.
That is what reform schools are for.
- Mae West
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
- Groucho Marx
Give a man one rabbit, and he will eat for a day;
give a man two rabbits, and he will
feed his family and his neighbors
and return you 64,768 rabbits in change.
- Anonymous
One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.
- Ogden Nash
A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler
A man likes his wife to be
just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness,
and just stupid enough to admire it.
- Israel Zangwill
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
- Mae West
Afraid? Me? A man who's licked
his weight in wild caterpillars?
Afraid? You bet I'm afraid!
- Groucho Marx
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.