Quotes and Facts
These quotes and facts can be included in presentations
“Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.” – J. Sterling Morton
“The forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself. Nature is not merely created by God, nature is God. Whoever moves within the forest can partake directly of sacredness, experience sacredness with his entire body, breath sacredness and contain it within himself, drink the sacred water as a living communion, bury his feet in sacredness, open his eyes and witness the burning beauty of sacredness.” – Richard Nelson
“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” – John Muir
“The forests are the flags of nature. They appeal to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and the boundaries of nations are forgotten. It may be that some time an immortal pine will be the flag of a united peaceful world.” – Enos A. Mills
“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, 1817 – 1862
“When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?” – Seneca
“In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.” – John Fowles
“All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death: its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three Fates – the Past, Present and Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well. It’s “bough,” with their buddings and disleafings, – events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, – stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. …. I find no
similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.”
– Thomas Carlyle
“The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings.
– Buddhist Sutra
“The forests are dying, the rivers are dying, and we are called to act. To return Earth to harmony is to restore the harmonious principles within ourselves and to act as responsible caretakers – to save the forests and the waters for future generations.”
– Dhyani Ywahoo
“Trees can reduce the heat of a summer’s day, quiet a highway’s noise, feed the hungry, provide shelter from the wind and warmth in the winter. You see, the forests are the sanctuaries not only of wildlife, but also of the human spirit. And every tree is a compact between generations.”
– George Bush, U.S. President, 1989
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”
– Gandhi
“Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.”
– Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
“Four hundred year old trees,
who draw aliveness from the earth
like smoke from the heart of God,
we come, not knowing
you will hush our little want
to be big;
we come, not knowing
that all the work is so much
busyness of mind; all
the worry, so much
busyness of heart.
As the sun warms anything near,
being warms everything still
and the great still things
that outlast us
make us crack
like leaves of laurel
releasing a fragrance
that has always been.”
– Mark Nepo, In Muir Woods
“We are the books in your hands,
the sturdy chairs on your floors,
the upright walls of your houses,
the strong slanted roofs protecting your heads,
the holders of food during your meals,
the coffins for your rotting flesh,
the doors to your worlds,
the tissues cleaning the crap off your arses,
the boats for your fishers of men,
the forests on your Mother Earth,
the heat in your hearth,
the Sacred Rattles of the Winds,
the cooling shade for your summers,
the handles of your tools of life and death.
We are the Ancient Green Ones,
Yggdrasil, Ashvattha, Etz Chaim,
Arbotvitae, Axis Mundi of Many Names;
Ten Thousand Forms yet One of Kind,
the oldest living beings,
the largest and tallest living beings.
Yes, the Givers of the fruits and nuts in your hands.
Yes, the Givers of the air that you breathe.
Yes, the Trees, the Trees, the Trees!”
– Mike Garofalo, Above the Fog
Forest Facts
http://www.americanforests.org/explore-forests/forest-facts/