The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. – Chinese Proverb
You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night. – Denise Levertov
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
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. – Henry David Thoreau
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
For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. – Martin Luther
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
Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life. – John Muir
If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees. – Hal Borland
Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good. – Sara Ebenreck, American Forests
If I thought I was going to die tomorrow, I should nevertheless plant a tree today. – Stephan Girard
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
