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
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“A great storm destroys much that is precious, but it may also clear the air and blow down trees which might have been obscuring the view and making our life stuffy, and reveal in our estate possibilities of development that we had not thought of.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A University's Bequest to Youth" (10 October 1936)
“. . . they [the Walloos] are but the rotting stump of a tree that once was tall and fair. The dust of Time hides many such stumps . . . But what of that? Other fine trees are growing which also will become stumps in their season, and so on for ever.”
H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trees on fire with the first fall's frost Long black line in front of Holy Cross Blood moon risin' in a sky of black dust Tell me Baby who do you trust? The fuse is burning Shut out the lights The fuse is burning Come on let me do you right.”
Bruce Springsteen (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first deaths will barely swell the daily count, and no one in the statistics bureau will notice that extra zero. But after a while everyone will begin to look at each other and ask: what's happening? Because for months doors and windows are going to rattle, furniture and trees will creak.”
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trees creak with their arthritic arms / brittle in their powederd bark / this year took ten years to / tell me that I'm alone again”
Blake Schwarzenbach (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down; I had the radio on, I was drivin'. The trees went by, me and Del were singin', Little runaway, I was flyin'.Yeah runnin' down a dream That never would come to me. Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads. I'm runnin' down a dream.”
Tom Petty (1950–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You follow your feelings, you follow your dreams; You follow the leader into the trees. And what's in there waiting, neither one of us knows. You gotta keep one eye open the further you go.”
Tom Petty (1950–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm like the farmer, planting words, people are seeds/ My truth is the soil, help you grow like trees/ May the children come in all colors, change like leaves/ Behold before you, one of those prophetic MC's.”
“To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”
Alice Walker (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees.”
Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addressing German soldiers departing for the front in WWI (August 1914), as quoted in The Chanak Affair (1969) by David Walder, p. 21
“Not for naught had he gained access into darksome cults, had harkened to the grisly whispers of the votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and read the forbidden iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind.”
Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation. As soon as we stop believing in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.”
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Stonewall Jackson (1824–1863) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last words (May 10, 1863); as quoted in "Stonewall Jackson's Last Days" by Joe D. Haines, Jr. in America's Civil War
“At night there are no more farmers, no more farms. At night the fields dream, the fields are the forest. The boy stands looking at the fox As if, if he looked long enough — he looks at it. Or is it the fox is looking at the boy? The trees can't tell the two of them apart.”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!”
Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) first seen 1811 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Politics and Poetics", l. 72, in The Reflector, vol. i, no. 2 (Mar. 1811), p. 363
“Why are those buildings swaying like trees? ~ Hotel Womb”
Steve Kilbey (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap, and birds did sing, Trees did grow, and plants did spring; Every thing did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone.”
Richard Barnfield (1574–1627) said by 1627 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They're still building and testing / But what can we do / Condemning the seas and the land and the trees to a tomb”
“He is older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun's hot wheel on these. He wakes the gale that tears your trees, He sings to you from window sills.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But should you lure From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots Of pendent trees, the Monarch of the brook, Behoves you then to ply your finest art.”
James Thomson (poet, born 1700) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.”
Simone Weil (1909–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.”
John Masefield (1878–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stately Homes of England, How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land.”
Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Homes of England, st. 1 (1828).
“I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy.”
Thomas Hood (1799–1845) said by 1845 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell them they may go. I don’t approve of anything they’re doing.” Angered, the minister growled: “The Firster godmongers pray for you daily in your blindness, Majesty. Man is meant to procreate! We were given the universe to fill. What are a few animals, a few trees in the face of our destiny?”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are made of the stuff of stars, given our lives by a living world, given our selves by time. We are brother to the trees and sister to the sun. We are of such glorious stuff we need not carry pain around like a label. Our duty, as living things, to be sure that pain is not our whole story, for we can choose to be otherwise. As Ellin says, we can choose to dance.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Indian-Summer Reverie" (1846), stanza 8, p. 167
“Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Parting" (1852)
“So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads The wind is passing by.”
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Who Has Seen the Wind?, st. 2 (1872).
“The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield, And in her tranquil light Sleep falls on forest and field. See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep: The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.”
Robert Bridges (1844–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge.”
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) said by 1909 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sand as white as old bones, the pine trees strangely red where the sun comes down. I cannot say if it is our love, or the day, that is ending.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Departures (1964), translated by Michael Cuanach
“This Jerónimo, my grandfather, swineherd and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.”
David Hockney (1937–2026) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Nigel Farndale, "The talented Mr. Hockney," The Telegraph, (15 November 2001)
“When they burn forests, all the CO2 is released, and trees next door grow faster. So it doesn't create an environmental crisis like they want you to believe.”
Kent Hovind (born 1953) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Creation Seminar 7 - Kent Hovind, at 40 minute 43 seconds, Youtube (January 28, 2012)
“Those that are hunted Know this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge Of what is in glory above them, And to feel no fear.”
James Dickey (1923–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped.”
Annie Proulx (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Standing in front of a house in Harrow] A verge in front of your house and grass and a tree for the dog. Variety created in the façades of each of the houses — in the colouring of the trees. In fact, the country had come to the suburbs. Roses are blooming in Metro-Land just as they do in the brochures.”
John Betjeman (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning that will be found later white plumage huddled on telegraph wires in back gardens or fowl roosting in apple trees, the eternal sorrow that never sleeps of great Mexico.”
Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old Old winds that blew When chaos was, what do They tell the clattered trees that I Should weep?”
Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Listen. With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall.”
Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“2248. He that plants Trees, loves others besides himself.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind — But what? On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested — the snow is covered with broken seed husks and the wind tempered with a shrill piping of plenty.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Awaken an Old Lady", originally published in The Dial (August 1920)
“One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them.”
Bel Kaufman (1911–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.”
Jacques Deval (1890–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Barbara K. Rodes and Rice Odell, A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations (1992), p. 22
“[In his Highgrove garden.] I happily talk to the plants and trees, and listen to them. I think it's absolutely crucial [...] Everything I've done here, it's like almost with your children. Every tree has a meaning for me.”
Charles III (born 1948) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment in BBC documentary, as reproduced in "Prince Charles Eavesdrops on Tourists, Speaks to Plants" ABC News (20 September 2010)
“[commenting French Cubist art] ..Trees are violated, humans become incapable of life; there is a coercion that leads to the un-recognazibility of the object, to a picture-puzzle. For here what counts is not a profane law, but a law of art.”
Paul Klee (1879–1940) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote (April 1912); as cited in Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia, Roger Benjamin & Cristina Ashjian; Univ of California Press, 2015, p. 106
“If along the path of truth, success (which was often near-failure unnoticed) is subjected to the same scrutiny and desire for improvement as failure, we may find ourselves in closer proximity to trees.”
Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source