Sentinels of the Earth

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands,
translated from French by Stuart Gilbert

If you would know strength and patience,
welcome the company of trees. 
- Hal Borland

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The trees are God’s great alphabet:
With them He writes in shining green
Across the world His thoughts serene. 
- Leonora Speyer

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky
- Khalil Gibran

  Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of
gold and silver.
- Martin Luther

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the
listening heaven. 
- Rabindranath Tagore,
Fireflies, 1928

Trees are much like human beings and
enjoy each other’s company. 
- Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

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

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.
They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the
sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how
fast and far!
-  John Muir

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins
- Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
 The next best time is now. 
-  Proverb

  Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing in time to come.
How do we know? They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.
- Wendell Berry

Believe one who knows
You will find something greater in woods than books.
Trees and stones will teach you
that which you can never learn from masters
- Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)