Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. – George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. – Cree Indian Proverb

Any fool can destroy trees…. God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools… – John Muir, “The American Forests,” August 1897

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