Tree Quotes

He that plants trees loves others besides himself. -- Thomas Fuller

One generation plants the trees under whose cool shade another generation takes its ease. (Proverb)

You can gauge a country's wealth, its real wealth, by its tree cover.

-- Richard St. Barbe Baker

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in their way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity...and some scarce see nature at all. But by the eyes of a man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. -- William Blake

Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good. -- Sara Ebenreck, American Forests

No shade tree? Blame not the sun but yourself. -- Chinese Proverb

We plant trees not for ourselves, but for future generations. -- Caecilius Statius

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. -- St. Bernard

When asked what he would do, if he knew the next day he was going to die, Martin Luther replied, "I would plant a tree".

The largest living thing on earth: a tree. The oldest living thing: a tree. The symbol of life, of family branchings, a graph of weather and time, and a sentinel to history. Source of food, fighter against wind and water erosion, the substance of building and the pages upon which we scribble. --David Krotz, Co-Founder, Trees Forever

Man has gone to the moon but he does not yet know how to make a flame tree or a bird song. Let us keep our dear countries free from irreversible mistakes which would lead us in the future to long for those same birds and trees.
Felix Houphouet-Boigny
President of the Ivory Coast

It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to talk to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. -- Herman Hesse

Like the trees, we are visitors, guests of the earth. - Kim Stafford

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. - John Muir

Beautification to my mind is far more than a matter of cosmetics. To me, it describes the whole effort to bring the natural world into harmony, and to bring order, usefulness, and delight to our whole environment. And that of course only begins with flowers and the landscape.
- Lady Bird Johnson