Monday 12 August 2013

Veterans Day

But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for,
Is their monument to-day, and for aye.
~Thomas Dunn English www.onlineexamguide.com


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.  ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.  ~José Narosky


This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.  ~Elmer Davis


But fame is theirs - and future days
On pillar'd brass shall tell their praise;
Shall tell - when cold neglect is dead -
"These for their country fought and bled."
~Philip Freneau www.onlineexamguide.com


Freedom is never free.  ~Author Unknown


I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.  ~Gary Hart


When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?  ~George Canning www.onlineexamguide.com


As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is


Unemployment


It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own.  ~Harry S Truman


Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.  ~Orson Scott Card


Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.  ~William E. Barrett


A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.  ~Thomas Carlyle


You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.  ~William Shakespeare


A man who has no office to go to - I don't care who he is - is a trial of which you can have no conception.  ~George Bernard Shaw


The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job.  ~Slappy White


[O]f all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.  ~Jane Addams, 1910


Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.  ~Cato the Elder


The hardest work in the world is being out of work.  ~Whitney Young, Jr.


An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.  ~Author Unknown


Unemployment diminishes people.  Leisure enlarges them.  ~Mason Cooley


Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause.  ~William Henry Beveridge


We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.  ~John F. Kennedy


When I quit working, I lost all sense of identity in about fifteen minutes.  ~Paige Rense


When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.  ~Jesse Jackson www.onlineexamguide.com


I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work.  Work organizes life.  It gives structure and discipline to life.  ~Bill Clinton


What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?  ~Gerald Barzan


The shock of unemployment becomes a pathology in its own right.  ~Robert Farrar Capon, "Being Let Go," New York Times, 5 August 1984 www.onlineexamguide.com

USA Patriotic

 Note:  Not all these authors are from the U.S.A.; however, the sentiments can be applied to patriotism all around the globe.


I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.  I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.  ~Abraham Lincoln


America is a tune.  It must be sung together.  ~Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds www.onlineexamguide.com


We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots.  ~Charles F. Browne


What is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."  ~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade


[P]atriotism... is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.  ~Adlai Stevenson


A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.  ~George William Curtis


When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea.  He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.  ~Adlai Stevenson


Love your country.  Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him.  ~Giuseppe Mazzini


There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream.  They are right.  It is the American dream.  ~Archibald MacLeish


National honor is national property of the highest value.  ~James Monroe, first inaugural address, 4 March 1817


How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.  ~Paul Sweeney


May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!  ~Daniel Webster www.onlineexamguide.com


This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.  ~Elmer Davis


The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks of honour we had forgotten - duty and patriotism, clad in glittering white; the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to heaven.  ~David Lloyd George


Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Essays, Second Series, 1844


If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.  ~Hamilton Fish


And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
~Lee Greenwood


The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.  ~Thomas Jefferson


America is much more than a geographical fact.  It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.  ~Adlai Stevenson


From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.
~Samuel F. Smith, "America"


Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.  ~John Gunther


America is a passionate idea or it is nothing.  America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos.  ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949


Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
~John Dickinson


If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.  ~Author Unknown


Where liberty dwells, there is my country.  ~Benjamin Franklin


Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!  ~Daniel Webster


If you take advantage of everything America has to offer, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.  ~Geraldine Ferraro


Oh, it's home again and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea
To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
~Henry Van Dyke


Sometimes people call me an idealist.  Well, that is the way I know I am an American.  America is the only idealistic nation in the world.  ~Woodrow Wilson


This, then, is the state of the union:  free and restless, growing and full of hope.  So it was in the beginning.  So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.  ~Lyndon B. Johnson


We sleep peacefully at night, cradled by the big strong hands of America.  ~Val Saintsbury


America is another name for opportunity.  Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I love my freedom.  I love my America.  ~Jessi Lane Adams


This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.  ~Theodore Roosevelt


Of all the supervised conditions for life offered man, those under USA's constitution have proved the best.  Wherefore, be sure when you start modifying, corrupting or abrogating it.  ~Martin H. Fischer


He loves his country best who strives to make it best.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll


It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism.  ~J. Horace McFarland


"Our country, right or wrong."  When right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.  ~Carl Schurz


Off with your hat, as the flag goes by!
And let the heart have its say;
you're man enough for a tear in your eye
that you will not wipe away.
~Henry Cuyler Bunner


It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations.  ~Henry Cabot Lodge


The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic - have always blown on free men.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.  ~Woodrow Wilson


Star-spangled happiness
and banner waves of pride.
~Cherishe Archer


My God!  How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!  ~Thomas Jefferson


America, for me, has been the pursuit and catching of happiness.  ~Aurora Raigne


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.  ~William J. Clinton


My favorite thing about the United States?  Lots of Americans, one America.  ~Val Saintsbury


Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance.  It is also owed to justice and to humanity.  Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.  ~James Bryce


Our great modern Republic.  May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.  ~Ulysses S. Grant


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.  ~Louis D. Brandeis


Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.  ~Seneca


Territory is but the body of a nation.  The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.  ~James Garfield


Ev'ry heart beats true
'neath the Red, White and Blue,
~George M. Cohan


We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us..... The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations.  ~Francis John McConnell


I believe in America because we have great dreams - and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.  ~Wendell L. Wilkie


To me, being an American means feeling safe.  ~Currielene Armstrong


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


It is sweet to serve one's country by deeds, and it is not absurd to serve her by words.  ~Sallust


We need an America with the wisdom of experience.  But we must not let America grow old in spirit.  ~Hubert H. Humphrey


May I never wake up from the American dream.  ~Carrie Latet


A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.  ~Bill Vaughan


I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.  ~Gary Hart


My patriotic heart beats red, white, and blue.  ~Author Unknown


Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.  ~Mark Twain


All we have of freedom, all we use or know - This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899


What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it.  ~Hubert H. Humphrey


You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.  ~Herman Melville


Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,
Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,
We pledge to our native soil.
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.
~Rudyard Kipling www.onlineexamguide.com


He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


Patriotism is easy to understand in America - it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.  ~Calvin Coolidge www.onlineexamguide.com


We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.  ~John F. Kennedy


The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.  ~Woodrow Wilson


Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.  ~Sinclair Lewis


Twins

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared:  twins.  ~Josh Billings


It's double the giggles and double the grins, and double the trouble if you're blessed with twins.  ~Author Unknown


My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.  ~Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band


A good neighbor will babysit.  A great neighbor will babysit twins.  ~Author Unknown


Twice as much to love, two blessings from above.  ~Author Unknown www.onlineexamguide.com


God touched our hearts so deep inside, our special blessing multiplied.  ~Author Unknown


It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.  ~Chinese Proverb


Life is two-riffic with twins.  ~Author Unknown


Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?  ~Herman Melville, Redburn. His First Voyage, 1849


...So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem...
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Note: This isn't actually about twins)


You can spend too much time wondering which of identical twins is the more alike.  ~Robert Brault,
Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:
I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.
~William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors


Constant togetherness is fine - but only for Siamese twins.  ~Victoria Billings


Hearts entwined
Twenty fingers, twenty toes,
two sweet babies with cheeks of rose.
Born on the same day, two gifts from above,
lives entwined, two babies to love.
~Author Unknown


When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.  ~Steven Wright


Twin one, twin too!  ~Author Unknown


What's cuter than one baby?
A precious set of twins!
With matching little outfits -
And matchless little grins...
With twice as many babies,
How very busy you will be -
Just think of all the loving
They'll bring your family.
~Author Unknown www.onlineexamguide.com


All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.  ~Lord Byron


Two faces to wash, and four dirty hands
Two insistent voices, making demands
Twice as much crying, when things go wrong
The four eyes closing, with slumber song
Twice as many garments, blowing on the line
Two cherubs in the wagon, soaking up sunshine
Work I do for twins, naturally comes double
But four arms to hug me, repay all my trouble.
~Author Unknown


When I was born the doctor took one look at my face, turned me over and said, "Look, twins!"  ~Rodney Dangerfield


Not double trouble, but twice blessed.  ~Author Unknown


There's two to wash, two to dry;
There's two who argue, two who cry....
There's two to kiss, two to hug;
And best of all, there's two to love!
~Author Unknown


I may be a twin but I'm one of a kind.  ~Author Unknown www.onlineexamguide.com


We came into the world like brother and brother;
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.
~William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors


Body and spirit are twins:  God only knows which is which.  ~Algernon Charles Swinburne

Truth


God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.  Take which you please - you can never have both.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.  ~Aldous Huxley


Truth, like milk, arrives in the dark
But even so, wise dogs don't bark.
Only mongrels make it hard
For the milkman to come up the yard.
~Christopher Morley, Dogs Don't Bark at the Milkman www.onlineexamguide.com


It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself.  ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia


I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.  ~Peter Altenberg


The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.  ~William James


Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found.  ~W. MacNeile Dixon


There is no god higher than truth.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The trouble about man is twofold.  He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.  ~Rebecca West


It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.  ~Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy


Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature.  ~Martin H. Fischer


When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.  ~William Blake


Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas.  ~Shoseki


Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was.  ~Robert Brault,

If there be no God, then what is truth but the average of all lies.  ~Robert Brault,

There is no Truth.  There is only the truth within each moment.  ~Ramana Maharshi, attributed


Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart, Turn the Page
(Thank you, Ryan)


Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.  ~Oscar Wilde


My truths do not last long in me.  Not as long as those that are not mine.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Truth breeds hatred.  ~Bias of Priene, Maxims www.onlineexamguide.com


If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?  ~Dōgen Zenji


One of life's regrets is that you didn't always tell the truth, and now it's too late, because the truth has changed.  ~Robert Brault,

People always think something's all true.  ~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye


A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.  ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried


Truth is tough.  It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table


Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.  ~Leo Tolstoy


Truth is the breath of life to human society.  It is the food of the immortal spirit.  Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Seek truth and you will find a path.  ~Frank Slaughter


I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.  ~Alphonse de Lamartine, "Marseillaise of Peace," 1841


Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.  ~Jean-Paul Sartre


Don't keep searching for the truth, just let go of your opinions.  ~Author Unknown


There are more martyrs to nonsense than truth, truth preferring missionaries.  ~Robert Brault,

Truth is a great flirt.  ~Franz Liszt


I am of the Buddhists.  The great Teacher comes periodically.  He is followed by pupils who corrupt the texts and then a new Buddha must be born to reëstablish the truth.  ~Martin H. Fischer


We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.  ~Denis Diderot


All great truths begin as blasphemies.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska, 1919


...Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it:  consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~Robinson Jeffers, "The Silent Shepherds," The Beginning & the End


Do not mistake probability for truth, for it is a notorious liar. ~Robert Brault,

The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage.  He lives... by make-believe.  ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938 www.onlineexamguide.com


When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it.  ~French Proverb


Once an absurdity is accepted as truth, it will seem truer the more absurd it is shown to be.  ~Robert Brault,

Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford... but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her.  ~Charles Lamb


We do not err because truth is difficult to see.  It is visible at a glance.  We err because this is more comfortable.  ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn


The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.  ~Attributed to James A. Garfield


Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.  In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.  ~Arthur Schopenhauer


There is no truth.  There is only perception.  ~Gustave Flaubert


If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on.  ~Stopford Brooke

Trust

 One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.  ~E.M. Forster


I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.  ~Henry David Thoreau


Our distrust is very expensive.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson www.onlineexamguide.com


You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.  ~Frank Crane


The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.  ~Henry L. Stimson


We're all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.  ~Booker T. Washington


I trust everyone.  I just don't trust the devil inside them.  ~Troy Kennedy-Martin, The Italian Job


You can as easily love without trusting as you can hug without embracing.  ~Robert Brault,

Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.  ~Nicolas Walter, About Anarchism


Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence.  Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.  ~William E. Gladstone, 1866


Ultimately, there can be no complete healing until we have restored our primal trust in life. ~Georg Feuerstein


Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.  ~Charles Krauthammer


Trust your own instinct.  Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.  ~Billy Wilder


Trust is letting go of needing to know all the details before you open your heart.  ~Author Unknown


There comes a point in a relationship when you realize that you trust someone enough to let them keep their secrets.  ~Robert Brault,

Trust only movement.  Life happens at the level of events, not of words.  Trust movement.  ~Alfred Adler


Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.  ~William Shakespeare www.onlineexamguide.com


A skeptic is a person who would ask God for his ID card.  ~Edgar A. Shoaff


You can only trust yourself... and barely that.  ~Paige Wilson


Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.  ~Lemony Snicket


Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.  ~George MacDonald


Government is an unnecessary evil.  Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.  ~Fred Woodworth, The Match!, No. 79


A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.  The order varies for any given year.  ~Paul Sweeney www.onlineexamguide.com


In God we trust, all others we virus scan.  ~Author Unknown


Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.  ~Helen Rowland


Trees

 If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.  ~Henry David Thoreau


You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.  ~Denise Levertov www.onlineexamguide.com


I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.  ~Henry David Thoreau


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


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


Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes"


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


I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.  ~Willa Cather, 1913


Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats.  ~Woody Allen


If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down?  We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.  ~Jack Handey


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, "Song of the Open Road," 1933


The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"


Trees are your best antiques.  ~Alexander Smith www.onlineexamguide.com


A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.  But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.  No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.  ~John Muir


A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.  ~Welsh Proverb


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


There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.  ~Minnie Aumonier


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


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


We all travel the milky way together, trees and men... trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense.  They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true:  but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much.  ~John Muir, Scribner's Monthly, November 1878


The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber.  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


Alone with myself
The trees bend to caress me
The shade hugs my heart.
~Candy Polgar


Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved.  You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?  ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


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


He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
~Lucy Larcom, "Plant a Tree"


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, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903


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.  ~J. Lubbock


Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran


To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them — the whole leaf and root tribe. ~Henry Ward Beecher


The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
~Robert Frost


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


I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.  ~James Russell Lowell www.onlineexamguide.com


Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. ~Fernando Pessoa


The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.  ~Nelson Henderson


No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.  ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs, 1887


Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.  ~Bill Vaughn


If I knew I should die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.  ~Stephen Girard


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


The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in their way.  ~William Blake


Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good.  ~Sara Ebenreck, American Forests


Why are there trees I never walk under
But large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892


The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.  ~Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938


There are rich counsels in the trees.  ~Herbert P. Horne


God in the whizzing of a pleasant wind
Shall march upon the tops of mulberry trees.
~George Peele, David and Fair Bathsabe, 1599


The trees are whispering to me, reminding me of my roots, and my reach... shhhhhh... can you hear them? Selflessly sharing their subtle song. ~Jeb Dickerson,

The best part of happiness is the pines. ~Terri Guillemets


Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. ~Cree Proverb


To heal mine aching moods,
Give me God's virgin woods.
~Clinton Scollard


Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing.  It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total.  ~Forsyth and Rada, Machine Learning


Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.  ~John Muir


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


It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.  ~Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message


Oaks are the true conservatives;
They hold old leaves till summer gives
A green exchange.
~Roy Helton, Come Back to Earth


A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense.  ~American Proverb


...Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze...
~James Russell Lowell


Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company.  Only a few love to be alone.  ~Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939


Newspapers:  dead trees with information smeared on them.  ~Horizon, "Electronic Frontier"


They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.  ~James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982


Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.  ~Henry David Thoreau, "Chesuncook," The Maine Woods, 1848


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


Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.  Everything is simply happy.  Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.  Look at the flowers - for no reason.  It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.  ~Osho www.onlineexamguide.com


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


Will urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature?  Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window?  When the only wild animal he knows is a rat - glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum?  When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning?  ~Frank N. Ikard, North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Houston, March 1968


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, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964


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, Essays, Second Series, 1844


Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.  ~J.J. Furnas


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914


Climb a tree - it gets you closer to heaven.  ~Author Unknown


We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them.  We say we love trees, yet we cut them down.  And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.  ~Author Unknown


Save a tree.  Eat a beaver.  ~Author Unknown


Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eating under a tree.  ~Elizabeth Russell


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


Acknowledgment:
Thanks to Michael P. Garofalo of The Spirit of Gardening
for sharing some of these wonderful quotes with me!