Trees contribute to their environment by providing oxygen, improving air quality, climate amelioration, conserving water, preserving soil, and supporting wildlife. During the process of photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide and produce the oxygen we breathe. Inspirational tree quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
If you’re searching for quotes about nature and encouraging water quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of inspiring storm quotes, popular surfing quotes, and encouraging desert quotes.
Most Famous Tree Quotes
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Marcus Garvey
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. John Muir
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Marcus Garvey
Of all the trees we could’ve hit, we had to get one that hits back. J.K. Rowling
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. Khalil Gibran
Don’t be ashamed to weep; tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. Brian Jacques
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. Bruce Lee
If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human. Maggie Stiefvater
A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. Saint Basil
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. William Blake
What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. Chris Maser
The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. Eliud Kipchoge
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
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. Albert Einstein
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. Ralph Waldo Emerson
I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap. Rodney Dangerfield
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. John Lubbock
Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being. Lou Holtz
Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year. Chad Sugg
I said to the almond tree, Friend, speak to me of God, and the almond tree blossomed. Nikos Kazantzakis
Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. Khalil Gibran
A man doesn’t plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity. Alexander Smith
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. George R.R. Martin
When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? Ralph Marston
Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I think the kind of landscape that you grew up in, it lives with you. I don’t think it’s true of people who’ve grown up in cities so much; you may love a building, but I don’t think that you can love it in the way that you love a tree or a river or the colour of the earth; it’s a different kind of love. Arundhati Roy
A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander. Roman Payne
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. Mark Twain
Trees’re always a relief, after people. David Mitchell
If a tree dies, plant another in its place. Carolus Linnaeus
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
It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree. James Weldon Johnson
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn’t it just lie there and rot? Chuck Palahniuk
One that would have the fruit must climb the tree. Thomas Fuller
Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower. That’s the kind of love my parents had. Not so consuming and more everlasting. And you see that tree over there? Now it’s only showing green leaves, but during the spring it’s covered in flowers. Because as reliable as trees are, they can also speak of beauty and passion. Mya Robarts
I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can’t be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don’t have what we call intelligence, and they’re surviving just fine. Neil deGrasse Tyson
When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air. Jodi Thomas
My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. Douglas Adams
All our wisdom is stored in the trees. Santosh Kalwar
The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you’re free. Ray Manzarek
Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, That is an oak tree, or that is a banyan tree, the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln
In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike. Paulo Coelho
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. Warren Buffett
There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things. Richard Powers
Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. Robert H. Schuller
I’m planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots. Andrea Koehle Jones
I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. Max Ehrmann
Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking. Wangari Maathai
I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow. Ada Limon
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall. In their rings we read ancient weather storms, sunlight, and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers even after it has been felled. Anne Michaels
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. Thomas Hardy
They have in me struck down but the trunk of the tree; the roots are many and deep they will shoot up again! Toussaint Louverture
I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief it seems they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. May Sarton
What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing. Jay Inslee
If you really want to eat, keep climbing. The fruits are on the top of the tree. Stretch your hands and keep stretching them. Success is on the top, keep going. Israelmore Ayivor
Friendship is a sheltering tree. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. Willa Cather
There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain. Audrey Hepburn
There’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be in the position that I am if I didn’t have my One Tree Hill fans. They’re the most dedicated, devoted fans. They’re behind you no matter what. If one person says one bad thing about me on Twitter, they’re fighting back! Jana Kramer
She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees. Lynn Kurland
But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself. Mary Shelley
I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river, I’m still learning how to see them; I’m still discovering how to render their forms. I will spend a lifetime doing that. Maybe someday I’ll get it right. Alan Lee
You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds. Huey Newton
I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I’ll tell you shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there’d be no night! Ray Bradbury
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
From barren brown stems to glistening leaf buds; from the leaf buds to snowy virginity of Bloom. It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. Zora Neale Hurston
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn. Walter Scott
You know me, I think there ought to be a big old tree right there. And let’s give him a friend. Everybody needs a friend. Bob Ross
Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness. Stephen Fry
We need to save the forests. I have a big warehouse we can store them in. Bauvard
The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self organizing and self correcting universe the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. Marianne Williamson
This is your bravery test. You worked so hard and then a crazy haired guy tells you to throw in a big ol tree on top of it all. Take a two inch brush. Bob Ross
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched. Blaise Pascal
When you put a log on the fire, the light and heat you see is, in a literal sense, the decades of sunshine that tree basked in over its lifetime. Peter Brannen
Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground. Pope Paul VI
The planting of a tree, especially one of the long living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil. George Orwell
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? Walt Whitman
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. Martin Luther
We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours. Marcel Proust
If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree. Jim Rohn
If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees. Lao Tzu
Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it. Douglas Hyde
Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929. John Vaillant
Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. Lord Byron
Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn’t necessarily expect to witness. Michael Pollan
With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is. Abraham Maslow
Trees there were, old as trees can be, huge and grasping with hearts black as sin. Strange trees that some said walked in the night. Neil Gaiman
A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at? Ronald Reagan
The few trees still upright were stripped of their branches, lonely flagpoles without a nation to claim them. Mike Mullin
I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up. Mary Cassatt
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity? Seneca the Elder
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. Rabindranath Tagore
It must be October, the trees are falling away and showing their true colors. Charmaine J Forde
Try to forget what objects you have before you a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you. Claude Monet
He’d grown unused to woods like this. He’d become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things. Michael Montoure
Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined. Alexander Pope
There are gigantic trees that have grown tall into the winds and the clouds over the thousands of years of their lives, their tops are rustled and tossed by the mists of the atmosphere! Then there are the short trees that don’t live for long, they are young with no deep roots and only a few annual rings to tell their stories.The tall, ancient trees sway in the realm of freedom while the short young trees cannot even raise their branches into that direction of the sky! Now, you are the bird who needs a tree to live in; if you choose to live in the tree which thrives in the realm of freedom, that doesn’t mean you are not committed to that tree. You are still committed to your tree, but together you and your tree live in freedom. Freedom is not the absence of commitment. If you are the bird who chooses to fly around amongst the short trees and live in them, that’s because your wings are too short to make it any higher and your vision too near to see any further into the clouds. And if you move from one short tree to the next short tree, that doesn’t mean you are free, you are still down there below, freedom is still nowhere near you. C. JoyBell C.
A tree’s wood is also its memoir. Hope Jahren
When you’re outnumbered by trees your perspective shifts. Jessica Marie Baumgartner
You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. Hal Borland
I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong. The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence the awe of them came on me, the religion. Ursula K. Le Guin
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
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
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. E. O. Wilson
The sunlight, penetrating the gaps in the tall trees, plays chess on the gravestones, shifting slowly and thoughtfully across the worn old stones. The wind, like a hundred violins, plays perpetually in the topmost branches of the deodars. Ruskin Bond
I’m like a tree. My leaves might change color, but my roots are the same. Rose Namajunas
The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unwakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched. Daphne du Maurier
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. Joyce Kilmer
A farmer is a magician who produces money from the mud. Amit Kalantri
A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. George H. W. Bush
She saw night lights in the rooms of the babies who dreamed soft seersucker dreams, drugged happy with the heat, their pink baby bodies curled against worn out cotton, not fearing Hitler yet, their strong, tiny hearts beating in unison with the trees and the creeks and the bayou. Rebecca Wells
The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree. Thomas Campbell
The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child’s words and child’s deeds didn’t make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn’t observed, even pressed his cheek against it. Karl Ove Knausgård
Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree. Joyce Meyer
To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots. Richard Mabey
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
Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed. Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Reversing deforestation is complicated; planting a tree is simple. Martin O’Malley
I’m such a fan of nature, and being with the trees every day fills me with joy. Scott Blum
As the poet said, Only God can make a tree, probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. Woody Allen
There are rich counsels in the trees. Herbert P. Horne
When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. Paul Cezanne
He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him. Henry Van Dyke
Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. Baha’u’llah
