A collection of inspirational tree quotes, as well as shareworthy quotes about trees, nature, leaves, seasons, gardening, flowers, wildlife, fruit, green living, and the environment.
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
— Kahlil Gibran
“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
― Chinese proverb
“You know me, I think there ought to be a big old tree right there. And let’s give him a friend. Everybody needs a friend.”
― Bob Ross
“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”
― Winston Churchill
“People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world that will not sustain people.”
― Bryce Nelson
“A tree is our most intimate contact with nature.”
― George Nakashima
“A grove of giant redwood or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.”
― Thomas Fuller
“Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves.”
― Tasneem Hameed
“Be like a tree. The tree gives shade even to him who cuts off its boughs.”
― Sri Chaitanya
“The best friend on earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright
More Tree Quotes:
“We’re merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru
“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”
— Hal Borland
“To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, to live as a people, we must have trees.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
“You can’t have the fruits without the roots.”
― Stephen Covey
“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.”
― Shira Tamir
“Trees indeed have hearts.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Trees are right at the heart of all the necessary debates: ecological, social, economic, political, moral, religious.”
― Colin Tudge
“The symbolism – and the substantive significance – of planting a tree has universal power in every culture and every society on Earth, and it is a way for individual men, women and children to participate in creating solutions for the environmental crisis.”
― Al Gore
“When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.”
— Jodi Thomas
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
— Dolly Parton
“A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance.”
― Wangari Maathai
“Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time.”
— Katrina Mayer
Even More Tree Quotes:
“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.”
― Aldo Leopold
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
― John Muir
“A tree falls the way it leans.”
― Bulgarian proverb
“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, ‘In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!’”
― John F. Kennedy
“How could you not be hopeful if you’ve got a tree around?”
― Ross Spears
“But down deep, at the molecular heart of life we’re essentially identical to trees.”
— Carl Sagan
“Trees give peace to the souls of men.”
― Nora Waln
“Trees are your best antiques.”
― Alexander Smith
“This oak tree and me, we’re made of the same stuff.”
— Carl Sagan
“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.”
― Welsh proverb
“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
More Than More Tree Quotes:
“Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root.”
― Malay proverb
“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.”
― Elizabeth Lawrence
“Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
— Alexander Pope
“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”
― Albert Schweitzer
“A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.”
— Hal Borland
“A tree which has lost its head will never recover it again, and will survive only as a monument of the ignorance and folly of its Tormentor.”
― George William Curtis
“How beautiful leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”
― John Burrough
“Around a flowering tree, one finds many insects.”
― Guinea proverb
“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.”
— Chinese proverb
“Let’s take our hearts for a walk in the woods and listen to the magic whispers of old trees.”
― unknown
Even More Than More Tree Quotes:
“I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap.”
― Rodney Dangerfield
“The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”
— Moliere
“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”
— Willa Cather
“He who plants a tree, plants a hope.”
― Lucy Larcom
“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
“Of all man’s works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
“It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees.”
— Wilson Flagg
“I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.”
— Mary Cassatt
“To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
― Chico Mendes
Still More Tree Quotes:
“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson
“I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.”
― Ogden Nash
“Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux
“Friendship is a sheltering tree.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Love is a tree; and lovers are its shade.”
― Rumi
“The trees encountered on a country stroll
Reveal a lot about that country’s soul…
A culture is no better than its woods.”
― W.H.Auden
“Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.”
— Victor Hugo
“If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.”
― Hal Borland
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
― Warren Buffett
“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
Bonus Tree Quotes:
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath
“We can learn a lot from trees: they’re always grounded but never stop reaching heavenward.”
— Everett Mamor
“Ancient trees are precious. There is little else on Earth that plays host to such a rich community of life within a single living organism.”
— Sir David Attenborough
“I think of trees as my extended family, living, breathing and social, like us.”
— Dame Judi Dench
“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”
— Saint Basil
“When we plant a tree, we are doing what we can to make our planet a more wholesome and happier dwelling-place for those who come after us if not for ourselves.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
“It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”
— Wangari Maathai
“You will find something far greater in the woods than you will find in books. Stones and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.”
— Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
“A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.”
— Peter Wohlleben
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
— Martin Luther
“The twisted tree lives its life, while the straight tree ends up in planks.”
— Chinese Proverb
Do you have a favorite quote about trees or a few beloved tree quotes that you would like to see included here? Please email your tree quotes and attribution to Trees Group.
If you like these tree quotes, you may want to peruse this page of forest quotes, season quotes, or this collection of quotes about nature. We also encourage you to laugh, groan, and giggle at some funny forest jokes, tree jokes, tree riddles, and tree puns.