Tree lover?
Then you’ll love these quotes about trees!
- Find tree quotes about life and love.
- Inspiring proverbs about trees.
- Short tree quotes.
- Funny quotes about trees.
- And tree planting quotes that motivate action to improve our future.
These are perfect to share on Arbor Day, and other celebrations of trees and our environment. Find a handy list of tree holidays near the end!
Let’s wander into this forest of quotes right now.
Inspirational Tree Quotes
Inspiring words on the beauty and wonder of trees!
Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.
~ Khalil Gebran
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
~ John Muir
The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be like a tree. The tree gives shade even to him who cuts off its boughs.
~ Sri Chaitanya
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.
~ Walter Scott
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
~ Ambrose Bierce
Of all man’s works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
The trees are God’s great alphabet: with them he writes in shining green across the world his thoughts serene.
~ Leonora Speyer
Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
~ Anton Chekhov
Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.
~ Munia Khan
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
~ John Muir
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
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~ John Lubbock
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.
~ Mother Teresa
Mother Nature is always speaking. She speaks in a language understood within the peaceful mind of the sincere observer. Leopards, cobras, monkeys, rivers and trees; they all served as my teachers when I lived as a wanderer in the Himalayan foothills.
~ Radhanath Swami
You might also like these walking quotes and captions.
Trees Quotes About Life
We can learn lot about life from trees. Let these wise words guide you. You’ll find more in the Tree Proverbs section!
As the twig is bent the tree inclines.
~ Virgil
All our wisdom is stored in the trees.
~ Santosh Kalwar
You must grow like a tree, not like a mushroom.
~ Janet Erskine Stuart
The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
~ Moliere
Some people are like trees – they take forever to grow up.
~ Leslie Hillman
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
~ Chinese proverb
May my life be like a great hospitable tree, and may weary wanderers find in me a rest.
~ John Henry Jowett
If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches on the same tree.
~ W.B. Yeats
We can learn a lot from trees: they’re always grounded but never stop reaching heavenward.
~ Everett Mamor
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
~ Willa Cather
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
~ Hal Borland
We’re merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze.
~ Rasheed Ogunlaru
Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
~ Herman Hesse
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
~ E. M. Forster
In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.
~ Paulo Coelho
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~ John Lubbock
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
~ William Shakespeare
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
The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years. In their country, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and the beauty of life. It’s a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short.
~ Homaro Cantu
Have you seen these rose quotes?
Advice from a Tree
More life advice from this popular poem.
Advice from a Tree
by Ilan Shamir
Stand tall and proud.
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth.
Reflect the light of a greater source.
Think long term.
Go out on a limb.
Remember your place among all living beings.
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance:
The energy and birth of Spring
The growth and contentment of Summer
The wisdom to let go of leaves in the Fall
The rest and quiet renewal of Winter.
Feel the wind and the sun
And delight in their presence.
Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
And the mystery of the stars at night.
Seek nourishment from the good things in life
Simple pleasures
Earth, fresh air, light
Be content with your natural beauty.
Drink plenty of water.
Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes.
Be flexible.
Remember your roots.
Enjoy the view!
Short Tree Planting Quotes
Planting a tree is an investment in the future – yours as well as others.
This group of short quotes are all about planting trees with hope for the future. They’re perfect for making picture quotes!
He who plants a tree, plants a hope.
~ Lucy Larcom
He that plants trees loves others beside himself.
~ Thomas Fuller
Plant a memory, plant a tree, do it today for tomorrow.
~ Matz
On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.
~ W.S. Merwin
Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come.
~ Karen Joy Fowler
Reversing deforestation is complicated; planting a tree is simple.
~ Martin O’Malley
A man doesn’t plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
~ Alexander Smith
To plant trees is to give body and life to one’s dreams of a better world.
~ Russell Page
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
~ Chinese proverb
If I thought I was going to die tomorrow, I should nevertheless plant a tree today.
~ Stephen Girard
Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
~ Warren Buffett
Be sure to check out these love for nature quotes too.
Quotes About Planting Trees for Future Generations
Similar in intent to the quotes above, but a bit longer.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
~ Nelson Henderson
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
~ Martin Luther
Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.
~ Lord Orrery
He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.
~ Henry Van Dyke
Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn’t necessarily expect to witness.
~ Michael Pollan
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
~ D. Elton Trueblood
I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.
~ Penelope Keith
The planting of a tree is a modest form of immortality and one of the few truly long-term expressions of hope to mortal human beings.
~ Voltaire
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
Here are some inspiring flower and gardening quotes.
More Tree Planting Quotes
More great reasons to plant a tree! And don’t forget National Arbor Day – Friday, April 28, in 2023.
If a tree dies, plant another in its place.
~ Carolus Linnaeus
I’m planting a tree to remind me to be open and kind-hearted.
~ Andrea Koehle Jones
That’s the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree.
~ Wangari Maathai
Trees fall with spectacular crashes. Planting is silent and growth invisible.
~ Richard Powers
Planting a tree is the easiest way to align yourself with the cosmic rhythm.
~ Amit Ray
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
~ George Eliot
Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books.
~ Whitney Brown
Let soldiers on maneuver plant trees. Give police and criminals a shovel and a thousand seedlings.
~ John Wright
If you wish to be happy for a year, plant a garden. If you wish to be happy for a lifetime, plant a tree.
~ Jim Morris
Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.
~ Wangari Maathai
To be able to walk under the branches of a tree that you have planted is really to feel you have arrived with your garden.
~ Mirabel Osler
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.
~ Wendell Berry
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
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
The great French Marshal Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would never reach maturity for 100 years. The marshal replied: In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.
~ John F. Kennedy
That each day I may walk unceasingly on the banks of my water, that my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, that I may refresh myself under the shadow of my sycamore.
~ Egyptian tomb inscription
You’ll also enjoy these lake quotes and captions.
Tree Love Quotes
Express your love for trees with these quotes.
This oak tree and me, we’re made of the same stuff.
~ Carl Sagan
If you love a tree you will be more beautiful than before.
~ Amit Ray
Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, to live as a people, we must have trees.
~ Theodore Roosevelt
Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.
~ Chad Sugg
People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world that will not sustain people.
~ Bryce Nelson
Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.
~ Victor Hugo
I feel a great regard for trees; they represent age and beauty and the miracles of life and growth.
~ Louise Dickinson Rich
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
This solitary Tree! A living thing produced too slowly ever to decay; of form and aspect too magnificent to be destroyed.
~ William Wordsworth
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.
~ Alice Walker
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
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 remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets.
~ Hamlin Garland
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?
~ John Muir
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.
~ Anton Chekhov
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
~ William Blake
Every day’s a great day with these good morning quotes.
Short Tree Quotes
Perfectly short and sweet to tweet, or add text to photos.
Trees give peace to the souls of men.
~ Nora Waln
Hope is the tree that holds the world.
~ Pliny, the Elder
A tree is an incomprehensible mystery.
~ Jim Woodring
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
~ Winston Churchill
I have grown taller from walking with the trees.
~ Karle Wilson Baker
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
~ Joyce Kilmer
I’ve got to be by trees, otherwise I get claustrophobic.
~ Liam Gallagher
I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.
~ Georg Trakl
How could you not be hopeful if you’ve got a tree around?
~ Ross Spears
Trees love to toss and sway; they make such happy noises.
~ Emily Carr
When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.
~ Jodi Thomas
Even if one tree falls down it wouldn’t affect the entire forest.
~ Chen Shui-bian
The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
~ Saint Teresa of Avila
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
~ E. O. Wilson
Here’s a whole spectrum of rainbow quotes.
Quotes About Tree Roots
Be rooted like a tree. These quotes say it all.
Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves.
~ Tasneem Hameed
I’m planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots.
~ Andrea Koehle Jones
Earth stays in joy, When we plant a tree. Beneath the ground, oh, boy! Roots feel free.
~ Munia Khan
Grow as a palm-tree on God’s Mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast.
~ Samuel Rutherford
Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.
~ Victor Hugo
Giant oak trees… have deep root systems that can extend two-and-one-half times their height. Such trees rarely are blown down regardless of how violent the storms may be.
~ Joseph B. Wirthlin
I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
~ John Muir
Advice from a tree, stand tall and proud, sink your roots into the earth. Be content with your natural beauty, go out on a limb, drink plenty of water, remember your roots and enjoy the view.
~ Ilan Shmia
Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky.
~ Kim Taplin
You might also like these Taylor Swift quotes from songs.
Funny Tree Quotes
Laughter, like nature, is good for the soul! I’m sure the trees won’t mind.
I am two with nature.
~ Woody Allen
Trees: they’re all bark and no bite.
~ Unknown
I’d be a vegetarian if bacon grew on trees.
~ Homer Simpson
Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.
~ Rumi
Paper cut: A tree’s final moment of revenge.
~ Unknown
I shook my family tree and a bunch of nuts fell out.
~ Unknown
There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.
~ Bob Ross
A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense.
~ Woody Allen
I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.
~ Pablo Neruda
God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!”
~ Joseph Campbell
Maybe in our world there lives a happy little tree over there.
~ Bob Ross
If money is made out of paper, does that mean money grows on trees?
~ Unknown
Why pay money for the horror movies? Just go to a street without trees!
~ Mehmet Murat ildan
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
~ Jacques Deval
As the poet said, ‘Only God can make a tree,’ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
~ Woody Allen
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
~ Unknown
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
~ Bill Vaughn
You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
~ Hal Borland
Always watch where you’re going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the forest that was left out by mistake.
~ Unknown
If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it, how will the environmentalists react?
~ Unknown
To keep the grins going, try these funny Facebook quotes.
Proverbs About Trees
We can learn a lot from these folk proverbs from around the world. All about trees!
If you want apples, you have to shake the trees.
~ Bulgarian proverb
A big tree attracts the gale.
~ Chinese proverb
The wind does not break a tree that can bend.
~ Sukuma proverb
When the root is worthless, so is the tree.
~ German proverb
He is a fool who praises the fruit of a tree and forgets its roots.
~ African proverb
If a dead tree falls, it carries with it a live one.
~ Kenyan proverb
He that would eat the fruit must climb the tree.
~ Romanian proverb
Nut and fig trees need to be pruned aggressively.
~ Sicilian proverb
No matter how long a fallen tree stays in the river it can never be a crocodile.
~ African proverb
The vulture perches on the trees, because it does not feel sure on the ground.
~ Kikuyu proverb
One tree won’t hold two robins.
~ Latin proverb
Money doesn’t grow on trees.
~ Yiddish proverb
During a storm, you seek shelter under a tree and not the clouds.
~ African proverb
A tree starts with a seed.
~ Arabian proverb
Big trees cast more shadow than fruit.
~ German proverb
A tree cannot stand on the ground without its roots.
~ African proverb
A family tie is like a tree, it can bend but it cannot break.
~ African proverb
Wait until the tree has fallen before you jump over it.
~ Thai proverb
It is worms which destroys a tree, it is worry which destroys a man.
~ Turkish proverb
The leafiest tree doesn’t always have the juiciest frui.t
~ Panamanian proverb
No sane person sharpens his machete to cut a banana tree.
~ Nigerian proverb
When the shadow of a tree is bent, straighten the tree, not the shadow.
~ African proverb
Through a tree grow ever so high, the falling leaves return to the ground.
~ Malayan proverb
Have you seen these dog best friend quotes?
Woods and Forest Quotes
Let’s go where the trees hang out: the woods and forests!
Forests are the lungs of our land.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
A forest bird never wants a cage.
~ Henrik Ibsen
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
~ Lord Byron
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
~ John Muir
The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best.
~ Bernard Meltzer
Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
~ George Washington Carver
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
There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
~ Lord Byron
Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.
~ Orison Swett Marden
Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.
~ Alice Walker
Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
~ John Muir
My progress was rendered delightful by the sylvan elegance of the groves, chearful meadows, and high distant forests, which in grand order presented themselves to view.
~ William Bartram
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
~ John Lubbock
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
~ John Fowles
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
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 and activity; it affords protection to all beings.
~ Buddhist Sutra
Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.
~ John Muir
You might also like these fall quotes.
National Holidays to Celebrate Trees
It’s always a good day to celebrate trees, but these special tree holidays make it a must!
International Day of Forests, March 21.
Earth Day, April 22.
National Arbor Day, last Friday in April.
Arbor Day by state: varies based on best tree planting times in the area.
National Love a Tree Day, May 16.
National Tree Day (Australia), first Sunday of August.
National Tree Day (Canada), Wednesday of National Forest Week in September.
Plant a Tree Day, September 28th.
Tu BiShvat, the Jewish new year for trees. Dates vary, but it usually falls mid January to mid February. In 2024, it is January 24–25.
You can also find all the social media holidays to celebrate. There are 100s every month!
Love for Tree Quotes
I hope this quotes collection helped you inspire others to appreciate trees all the more.
Pin an image to Pinterest so you can return for more. You’ll want to share them on all the holidays named above – and every day.
For quotes you’ll love for every season and reason, be sure to see out index of all the best quotes.
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