Browse 1589 quotes about Forests.
“For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.”
“I think our forests should be preserved as much as humanly possible for recreation and just for enjoyment of the natural beauty of Pennsylvania.”
“Trees and soils can absorb carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel burning. It would be great to subsidize responsible farmers and forest managers.”
“As a whole forest becomes fragrant by the existence of a single tree with sweet-smelling blossoms in it, so a family becomes famous by the birth of a virtuous son.”
“To the artist, the forest is an asylum of peace and dancing shadows.”
“Preparing to fight wild fires is only part of the solution, we must be more pro-active and prevent the fires before they start, or reduce their intensity by removing forest waste and fuel build up.”
“Each generation of humanity takes the earth as trustees... We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.”
“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful and the ennobling in man.”
“Primeval forests! virgin sod! That Saxon has not ravish'd yet, Lo! peak on peak in stairways set- In stepping stairs that reach to God! Here we are free as sea or wind, For here are set Time's snowy tents In everlasting battlements Against the march of Saxon mind.”
“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees-tens of centuries old-that have been destroyed.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these western woods ... Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time-and long before that-God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“We are consuming our forests three times faster than they are being reproduced. Some of the richest timber lands of this continent have already been destroyed, and not replaced, and other vast areas are on the verge of destruction. Yet forests, unlike mines, can be so handled as to yield the best results of use, without exhaustion, just like grain fields.”
Source: Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia
“We have a right to expect that the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will take the lead in the preservation and right use of forests, in securing the right use of waters, and in seeing that our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the life of that purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of the man who actually tills it and makes his home in it.”
“The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted.”
Source: John Muir: Nature Writings
“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, man is in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway. If the importance of the forests were even vaguely understood, even from an economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country.”
Source: Presidential addresses and state papers
“The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage.... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.”
“The batÂtle we have fought, and are still fightÂing for the forests is a part of the eterÂnal conÂflict between right and wrong, and we canÂnot expect to see the end of it. …So we must count on watchÂing and strivÂing for these trees, and should always be glad to find anyÂthing so surely good and noble to strive for.”
“The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie ...imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.”
Source: Our National Parks
“In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others”
Source: THE YOSEMITE COLLECTION of John Muir (Illustrated): The Yosemite, Our National Parks, Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park, A Rival of the Yosemite, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Yosemite Glaciers, Yosemite in Winter & Yosemite in Spring
“These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes-nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the 'good' and the 'bad,' to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil-all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called 'insecticides,' but 'biocides.'”
Source: The house of life: Rachel Carson at work
“However useful may be the National Parks and Forests of the West for those affording the Pullman fare to reach them, what is needed by the bulk of the American population is something nearer home.”
“Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“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.”
Source: Joyce Kilmer: Memoir and poems
“I have had a love affair with Wake Forest since my undergraduate days, but I didn't realize until many years later what I had truly learned at Wake Forest, both in and out of the classroom, about the meaning of a productive and meaningful life.”
“Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California”
“A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
“The lumbermen...regarded forest devastation as normal and second growth as a delusion of fools....And as for sustained yield, no such idea had ever entered their heads. The few friends the forest had were spoken of, when they were spoken of at all, as impractical theorists, fanatics, or "denudatics," more or less touched in the head. What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American that the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating.”
“The Big Tree is Nature's forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.”
Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays
“Some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze andstone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horsesalong the edges of thick forests, and then we know that we have looked backthrough the ivory gates into that world of wonder that was ours, before we were wise and unhappy.”
Source: The Complete Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft: Necronomicon and Eldritch Tales
“Nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of the preservation of the forests, and it is criminal to permit individuals to purchase a little gain for themselves through the destruction of forests when this destruction is fatal to the well-being of the whole country in the future.”
Source: Presidential addresses and state papers
“Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race.”
Source: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt
“A clear stream, a long horizon, a forest wilderness and open sky - these are man's most ancient possessions. In a modern society, they are his most priceless.”
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969
“The immediate need for education and practice in using our natural resources of soil, forest, water, wildlife and areas of inspirational beauty to the best advantage of all, for this generation and others to come, is again apparent to every observant citizen.”
“The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth - soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife.”
Source: Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson
“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree”
“The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.”
Source: The Lands of the Saracen, Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
“A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless; forests which are so used that they cannot renew themselves will soon vanish, and with them all their benefits. A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but, as it were, a factory of wood and at the same time a reservoir of water. When you help to preserve our forests or plant new ones you are acting the part of good citizens.”
“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got of their bark hides.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“I hate a man who skins the land.”
“Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable.”
Source: Presidential Addresses and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt: With Portrait Frontispiece
“The object of our forest policy is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful-or because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness-but the making of prosperous homes-every other consideration becomes secondary.”
“We want the active and zealous help of every man far-sighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests.”
Source: Presidential Addresses and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt ...: With Portrait Frontispiece ...
“Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it's silence, it's beauty, it's humility. Stay aligned to that.”
Source: Infinite Self: 33 Steps to Reclaiming Your Inner Power
“The world is empty - all of the people and places, the earth, the seas, mountains, deserts, forests and cities, and the beings that inhabit them, are unchangeable.”
“Dispossessed peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, hungry nomads turn their herds out into fragile African rangeland, reducing it to desert, and small farmers in India and the Philippines cultivate steep slopes, exposing them to the erosive powers of rain. Perhaps half the world's billion-plus absolute poor are caught in a downward spiral of ecological and economic impoverishment. In desperation, they knowingly abuse the land, salvaging the present by savaging the future.”