I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
- Anne Frank
The human eye adores gazing; it feasts on wild beauty of new landscape, the dignity of trees, the tenderness of a human face, or the white sphere of the moon blessing the earth in a circle of light.
- John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.
- Le Corbusier
I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches.
Have you ever heard the earth breathe?
-Kate Chopin
Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time.
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
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
We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.
― Marcel Proust
You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
- Alexander Pope
When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me.
- John Updike
“We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
― Alan W. Watts
These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.”
― Anton Chekhov
I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.
― Truman Capote
We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.”
― Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees
What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants the friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high;
He plants a home to heaven anigh
For song and mother-croon of bird
In hushed and happy twilight heard -
The treble of heaven's harmony
These things he plants who plants a tree."
- Henry Cuyler Bunner, The Heart of the Tree
'The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.'
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Island of the Fay
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
- Robert M. Pirsig
by Shel Silverstein 🍃
Underneath the poet tree,
Come and rest awhile with me,
And watch the way the word-web weaves
Between the shady story leaves.
The branches of the poet tree
Reach from the mountains to the sea.
So come and dream, or come and climb –
Just don’t get hit by falling rhymes.
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
― Maya Angelou
M A H O G A N Y & D I A M O N D S
EMBODIES THE ESSENCE OF GUIDANCE AND PROTECTION
MIND/BODY BENEFITS: Strong connection to earth energy – good for drawing strength from earth. Enhances intuition.
HEALING PROPERTIES: Tea, made from the bark of mahogany, helps reduces fevers and helps ease diarrhea. The tea made from seeds is used to soothe toothaches. Mahogany fruit can be used as an energy drink that is believed to increase blood circulation and lower cholesterol. It is also believed to improve a man’s sexual vitality. Mahogany seeds are antibacterial and antimicrobial.