Ancient Trees Quotes

• Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Law, Tree

  Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

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• Trees have from time immemorial been closely associated with magic. These stout members of the vegetable kingdom may stand for as long as a thousand years, and tower far above our mortal heads. As such they are symbols and keepers of unlimited power, longevity, and timelessness. An untouched forest, studded with trees of all ages, sizes and types, is more than a mysterious, magical place - it is one of the energy reservoirs of nature. Within its boundaries stand ancient and new sentinels, guardians of the universal force which has manifested on the the Earth. . . .

  Scott Cunningham

  Vegetables, Years, Long

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• 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 Younger

  Science, Sky, Tree

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• Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got of their bark hides.

  John Muir

  Running, Fun, Long

  John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Henry Bugbee Kane (2001). “The Wilderness World of John Muir”, p.231, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees-tens of centuries old-that have been destroyed.

  John Muir

  Life, Running, Fun

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.720, Library of America

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• If ever you come upon a grove of ancient trees which have grown to an exceptional height, shutting out a view of sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.

  Seneca the Younger

  Space, Views, Sky

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• The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable it is alternately stone in you and star.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Stars, Fall, Sunset

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Evening”

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• My hands resemble some ancient tree: the roots that bind up the earth, the rock and the ceaselessly nibbling wordms.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Rocks, Hands, Roots

  Twitter post from Feb 02, 2012

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• Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
  Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
  And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
  That Spring is risen, is risen again,
  That Life is risen, is risen again,
  That Love is risen, is risen again, and
  Love is Lord of all.

  Alfred Noyes

  Life, Spring, Fall

  Alfred Noyes (2016). “The Lord of Misrule”, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

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• I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

  Isabel Allende

  Beach, Autumn, Reality

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• Again and Again, however, we know the language of love, and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the staggeringly secret abyss in which others find their end: again and again the two of us go out under the ancient trees, make our bed again and again between the flowers, face to face with the skies

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Flower, Language Of Love, Sky

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.189, Scholastic Inc.

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