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Timber Quotes

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Timber Quotes

“That wood," he said, pointing back to the pinewood on the mound, "is used for any building that goes on here. So is the one right over there; it is beech, elm and oak. We never buy a plank of timber here. And we never cut down a tree unless it is necessary. And whatever tree is cut down, is always replaced by a sapling of the same kind. That is another of our traditions. The result is that our woods never grow less. Even in the last war, when so much had to be cut for the Government, we replanted as fast as we cut down. I have a forestry man in charge, and we pride ourselves on our beautiful timber.”

“On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face og the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm eithout exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant!”

“You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.”

“[W]hat have we done with our forests? Chopped them, and burned them, and wasted them; and now almost the last of the great stands of timber are here on the Pacific slope. We are in the center of the best of them. Probably nowhere on earth does there exist a forest to compare in continuous grandeur and unqualified beauty with the Redwoods that are found along the Eel River and to the north.”

“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity -- then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.”

“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.”

“Uncle Sam is not often called a fool in business matters, yet he has sold millions of acres of timber land at two dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was worth more than a hundred dollars. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain.... a bad, black business from beginning to end.”

“Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.”

“Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?”

“A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.”

“Mansions once Knew their own masters, and laborious hinds, That had surviv'd the father, serv'd the son. Now the legitimate and rightful lord Is but a transient guest, newly arrived, And soon to be supplanted. He that saw His patrimonial timber cast its leaf, Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price To some shrewd sharper ere it buds again. Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile, Then advertised and auctioneer'd away.”

“We never know the timber of a man's soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture.”

“Don't google your name. Ever. Don't “search” for yourself on anything that glows in the dark. Don't let your beauty be something anyone can turn off. Don't edit your ugly out of your bio. Let your light come from the fire. Let your pain be the spark, but not the timber. Remember, you didn't come here to write your heart out. You came to write it in.”

“Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,-in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?”

“Trees which grow in places facing the course of the sun are not of porous fiber but are solid, being drained by the dryness... The trees in sunny neighborhoods, therefore, being solidified by the compact texture of their fiber, and not being porous from moisture, are very useful, so far as durability goes, when they are hewn into timber. The lowland firs, being conveyed from sunny places, are better than those highland firs, which are brought here from shady places.”

“For millennia the two-million acre redwood ecosystem thrived and sheltered myriad species of life. In the last 150 years, 97 percent of the original redwood forests have been destroyed by timber corporations. ... Big business cut-and-run logging operations have instilled a false dichotomy: jobs versus the environment.”

“The Federal Government has a responsibility to manage wisely those public lands and forests under its jurisdiction necessary in the interest of the public as a whole. ... In the utilization of these lands, the people are entitled to expect that their timber, minerals, streams and water supply, wildlife and recreational values should be safeguarded, improved and made available not only for this but for future generations.”

“Does anyone pray before they cut a tree? I haven't seen anyone do that yet in the timber industry. But my vision is that that day is coming. I have a vision of a world in which we relate to each other as souls - not as personalities - not as bodies and minds and capabilities to accomplish things in this domain of the five sense, but as immortal spirits learning together how to co-create this world.”

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring - when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.”

“And there are Ben [Jonson] and William Shakespeare in wit-combat, sure enough; Ben bearing down like a mighty Spanish war-ship, fraught with all learning and artillery; Shakespeare whisking away from him - whisking right through him, athwart the big bulk and timbers of him; like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet-lightning and sunbeams!”

“My father was a logger. He cut timber and hauled it out of the woods and had a sawmill. They sawed it into lumber. And, you know, the mines needed things they call timbers and collars and so forth, and they used collars on the railroad track that they put the rails on. And he - that was his occupation, just a sawmill man and a logger.”