Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Nature
LoveFriendshipHappinessHopeFearCourageDeathLifeTimeWarPeaceFreedomTruthWisdomKnowledgeScienceArtMusicNatureMoneyWorkPowerGodBeautyLaughterFamilySuccess and failureChangeDreamsBooks and reading
“Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving....”
H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) said by 1937 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For experience teacheth me that straight trees have crooked roots.”
John Lyly (1554–1606) said by 1606 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned slowly into autumn.”
“I'm walking through the leaves falling from the trees, Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees.”
“Ye can not sée the wood for trées.”
John Heywood (1497–1580) said by 1580 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No sky, no neighboring houses, no trees, no mountains. The fog had clamped it all off. It muffled sound too...She and Enoch were existing in a bubble of space maybe a hundred paces across... She wondered if it had been thus for Dodge in the beginning, when he had been alone in Bitworld and the Landform had begun to take shape around him.”
Neal Stephenson (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All dies! and not alone The aspiring trees and men and grass; The poets’ forms of beauty pass, And noblest deeds they are undone, Even truth itself decays, and lo, From truth’s sad ashes pain and falsehood grow.”
Herman Melville (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Lake", in Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville (1929), p. 350
“Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the act of smoking. How captivating is a Peruvian lady, swinging in her gaily-woven hammock of grass, extended between two orange-trees, and inhaling the fragrance of a choice cigarro!”
Herman Melville (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I heard the old, old men say, 'Everything alters, And one by one we drop away. They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, 'All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.”
Thomas Browne (1605–1682) said by 1682 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see, you could never do a sketch like that these days. The audience is too uninformed. I blame the Americans. Nation of obese, violent, pig-ignorant, bible-thumping morons contaminating world culture. That’s why I spend most of my time here in France. … Beautiful, isn’t it? Just look at those olive trees. [Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.]”
John Cleese (born 1939) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.
“Niggers was the ones with the rope, hanging off trees; Niggas are the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs.”
Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'That was the burden,' she mused, 'laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must rememeber; what we would forget.'”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and I have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said by 1519 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears — as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He could now feel his sanity beginning to give way. This was an actual sensation, a true thing. It was interesting. He imagined a tree overloaded with ice in a terrible storm would feel this way — if trees could feel anything—shortly before toppling. It was interesting... and it was sort of amusing.”
Stephen King (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fire he sang, that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames. New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer. As though his lyre (now I knew its name) were both frost and fire, its chords flamed up to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was fern in the swamp. I was coal.”
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you want a peaceful place to dwell Cold Mountain is guaranteed forever A light wind blows softly in the pines The sound is good when you are close One old man sits beneath the trees Reading Lao Tzu and Huang Ti, mumbling I could not find the world if I searched ten years I've forgotten the road by which I came”
“If you're looking for a place to rest Cold Mountain is good for a long stay The breeze blowing through the dark pines Sounds better the closer you come And under the trees a white haired man Mumbles over his Taoist texts Ten years now he hasn't gone home He's even forgotten the road he came by”
“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain — until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!”
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Posterity" (1939) as translated by H. R. Hays (1947)
“A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.”
Chanakya (375–283 BC) said by 283 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.”
Chanakya (375–283 BC) said by 283 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.”
Thomas Malory (1405–1471) said by 1471 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He waked through the green forest and listened to the various silences there. Not one silence, but several; the silence that the moss made underfoot, the silence the shadows made depending from the trees, the silence of small streams exploring tiny countries on all sides as he came into a clearing.”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was 16, I saw six people die horribly in an accident. I walked home holding on to walls and trees. It took me months to begin to function again. So I don't drive. But whether I drive or not is irrelevant. The automobile is the most dangerous weapon in our society — cars kill more than wars do. More than 50,000 people will die this year because of them and nobody seems to notice.”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”
P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.”
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) said by 1592 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Michael De Montaigne
“People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to—but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”
Abigail Adams (1744–1818) first seen 1784 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch (1784)
“Things whispered here, and the trees muttered with the wind and perhaps with other things. Men knew the place was old, old as the world, and they never made peace with it.”
C. J. Cherryh (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh Patimkin! Fruit grew in their refrigerator and sporting goods dropped from their trees!”
Philip Roth (1933–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God bless all the precious little examples and all their cascading implications; without these gems, these tiny acorns bearing the blueprints of oak trees, essayists would be out of business.”
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Questioning the Millennium (second edition, Harmony, 1999), p. 42
“Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again.”
Pericles (494–429 BC) said by 429 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trees don't grow to the sky.”
Louis Rukeyser (1933–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: July 26, 2002, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street
“The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ that evolved only once. The elephant's trunk, which can stack logs, uproot trees, pick up a dime, remove thorns, powder the elephant with dust, siphon water, serve as a snorkel, and scribble with a pencil, is another complex organ that evolved only once.”
Steven Pinker (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have watered the trees that blossom in the summer-time. Now let's sprinkle those whose flowering-time is past. That will be a better deed, because we shall not be working for a reward.”
Kalidasa (active around 400) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Act 1 (tr. Arthur W. Ryder, 1912)
“May lily-dotted lakes delight your eye; May shade-trees bid the heat of noonday cease; May soft winds blow the lotus-pollen nigh; May all your path be pleasantness and peace.”
Kalidasa (active around 400) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Act 4 (tr. Arthur W. Ryder, 1912)
“Search for a discipline within freedom! Don't let yourelf be governed by formulae drawn from decadent philosophies: they are for the feeble-minded. Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind...”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They took all the trees And put them in a tree museum And they charged all the people A dollar and a half just to see 'em.”
Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's coming on Christmas, They're cutting down trees. They're putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace. I wish I had a river I could skate away on”
Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. the grass, the soil — everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble.”
Tim O'Brien (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
John Muir (1838–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
John Muir (1838–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Muir's marginal note in volume I of Prose Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson (This volume is located at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. See Albert Saijo, "Me, Muir, and Sierra Nevada", in Rei…