Tree Lovers

This is a limited dedication to those humans who saw beyond the tree meat (wood and timber) and contemplated the wonder and life form that is each tree whether in a forest or standing somewhere lonely and often rooted under concrete.

A forest is a living thing like a human body… each part dependent on all the other parts. Louis L’Amour

A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral. Theodore Roosevelt

A house you can rebuild; a bridge you can restring; a washed-out road you can fill in. But there is nothing you can do about a tree but mourn. Louise Dickinson Rich

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

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe… What a terrible future! Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

A tree is our most intimate contact with nature. George Nakashima

Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests… No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. Charles Darwin

An autumn forest is such a place that once entered you never look for the exit! Mehmet Murat Íldan

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. John Muir

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything. Alan Watts

By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors. Kenzaburo Oe

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment. Jane Goodall

Endangered forests are being slaughtered for toilet paper. Daphne Zuniga

Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture. François-René de Chateaubriand

Healthy forests and wetlands stand sentry against the dangers of climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it away in plants, root systems and soil. Frances Beinecke

Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them. Isaac Asimov

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun: If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Mikhail Gorbachev

Sadly, it’s much easier to create a desert than a forest. James Lovelock

The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger. David Farr

The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life activity; it affords protection to all beings, offering shade even to the axe-man who destroys it. Gautama Buddha

The forest is my loyal friend. A Delphic shrine to me. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. James G. Watt

We’ve all got to come together, and we’ve got to protect what’s left of our ancient forests on this planet. Stella McCartney

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

What will the axemen do, when they have cut their way from sea to sea? James Fenimore Cooper

Thank you for reading some of the most heartfelt words ever written for forests and trees. We need trees much more than they need us. Save a tree today!