I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them. – James Russell Lowell

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French b

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. – Robert Louis Stevenson