Quotes & Sayings About A Fallen Tree

I think there is in the heart of a man a place made for wonder. It sleeps inside, awaiting fulfillment. All one's life, one gathers treasures to fill it. Sometimes they are tiny glistening jewels: a flower blooming in the shelter of a fallen tree, the arch of a small child's brow combined with the curve of her cheek. Sometimes, however, a trove falls into your hands all at once, as if some greedy pirate's chest spilled before an unsuspecting beholder. Such were the dragons on the wing. — Robin Hobb

We have gone far in our public places to push death aside, to consign it to a dusty corner, but in the wilderness it is ever present. It is the lover who makes life. The sensuous, entwined limbs of of predator and prey, the orgasmic death cry, the final spasmodic rush of blood, and even the soundless insemination of the earth by the fallen tree and crumbling leaf; these are the caresses of life's beloved, the indispensable other. — Rick Yancey

The tabby rogue bounded alongside the river until he reached the fallen tree that Sky had used to cross a few days before. Leading Firestar over to the far bank, Scratch started to climb another trail that led up the cliff face on the opposite side. Firestar panted after him, wishing he had the rogue's powerful haunches. Scratch was a true SkyClan cat! — Erin Hunter

The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol ... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore
a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic. — Gail Caldwell

Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.
... waters,where the stars shone like bonfires at night and the green of day was always the green of spring. Youth, love, beauty-I knew them in Avalon. Proud steeds, bright metal, soft lips, dark ale. Honor ... — Roger Zelazny

The children I describe here have horizontal conditions that are alien to their parents. They are deaf or dwarfs; they have Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; they are prodigies; they are people conceived in rape or who commit crimes; they are transgender. The timeworn adage says that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, meaning that a child resembles his or her parents; these children are apples that have fallen elsewhere - some a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. Yet myriad families learn to tolerate, accept, and finally celebrate children who are not what they originally had in mind. — Andrew Solomon

John Clare, in his poem To a Fallen Elm, makes the tree a selfmark as well as a landmark. — Tim Fulford

They found a thick tree that had fallen, the tangled roots exposed. They saw the drenched ground that had given way. The tree seemed more overwhelming when it lay on the ground. Its proportions frightening, once it no longer lived. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Sometimes the Nonman would climb upon some wild pulpit, the mossed remains of a fallen tree, the humped back of a boulder, and paint wonders with his dark voice. Wonders and horrors both. — R. Scott Bakker

It is the iron." Grimalkin picked his way over a puddle, then leaped atop a fallen tree, shaking out his paws."This close to the false king's realm, his influence is stronger that ever. It will be worse once you are actually within its borders."
Puck snorted."Doesn't seem like it's affecting you much, Cat."
That is because I am smarter than you and prepare for these things."
"Really? How would you prepare for me tossing you into a lake? — Julie Kagawa

It was important to choose the exact device to drive Charles away. An imperfect magic, or one incorrectly used, might only bring more disaster upon our house. I thought of my mother's jewels, since this was a day of sparkling things, but they might not be strong on a dull day, and Constance would be angry if I took them out of the box where they belonged, when she herself had decided against it. I thought of books, which are always strongly protective, but my father's book had fallen from the tree and let Charles in; books, then, were perhaps powerless against Charles. I lay back against the tree trunk and thought of magic; if Charles had not gone away before three days I would smash the mirror in the hall. — Shirley Jackson

I did not think I could stand a Christmas at my parents' house, with a plastic tree and no snow and the TV going constantly. It was not as if my parent were so anxious to have me, either. In recent years they had fallen in with a gabby, childless couple, older than they were, called the MacNatts. Mr MacNatt was an auto-parts salesman; Mrs MacNat was shaped like a pigeon and sold Avon. — Donna Tartt

He reached out, put his hands on her shoulders and pressed downwards. She fell into a seated position against a fallen tree.
"Sit," he said. "Stay."
"That's cute," she said. "Tell me to 'heel' and see what happens. — Jena Leigh

Dowered with great historic names which they almost despise, they do their best to drag the memory of their ancient lineage into dishonour by vulgar passions, low tastes, and a scorn as well as lack of true intelligence. Let us not talk of them. The English aristocracy was once a magnificent tree, but its broad boughs are fallen,
lopped off and turned into saleable timber,
and there is but a decaying stump of it left. — Marie Corelli

Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn't a real woodsman. — Neil Gaiman

And all these existents which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing - not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence - which is limited only by existence. I sank down on the bench, stupefied, stunned by this profusion of beings without origin: everywhere blossomings, hatchings out, my ears buzzed with existence, my very flesh throbbed and opened, abandoned itself to the universal burgeoning. It was repugnant. But why, I thought, why so many existences, since they all look alike? What good are so many duplicates of trees? So many existences missed, obstinately begun again and again missed - like the awkward efforts of an insect fallen on its back? (I was one of those efforts.) — Jean-Paul Sartre

Towering pines and hemlocks, was it? I thought, clambering over the burled knots of a fallen tree. The monstrous trunks rose so high that the lowest limbs started twenty feet above my head. Longfellow had no idea. — Diana Gabaldon

We folded up newspapers and made them into boats. We'd see whose would float the longest before it got bogged down, soggy, and sank. My father gave us a few pennies each day, which we'd toss and try to land on rocks.We'd wade in and get them again and again.Then we'd flip them in one final time to make a wish. Bliss and I could keep ourselves entertained for hours, but of course we became more and more aware that the whole forest was right there -- waiting for us to explore.
We didn't go far at first, not beyond where we could hear Mom call for us from the back door of the barn, but it gave us a whole new playground. We found a fallen log that we walked like a plank. There was a tree with a low straight branch that we could dangle and swing from. We gathered pine cones and tossed and batted them with twigs. — Riel Nason

To witness a fallen tree, but hear no sound......creates an illusion of its importance. — R.W. Erskine

There is a part of everything that remains unexplored, for we have fallen into the habit of remembering, whenever we use our eyes, what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at. Even the slightest thing contains a little that is unknown. We must find it. To describe a blazing fire or a tree in a plain, we must remain before that fire or that tree until they no longer resemble for us any other tree or any other fire. — Gustave Flaubert

For as long as I could remember, I'd been making vague and confident assurances that any day I would finish the thing [my book]. If and when I ever did, they would probably feel an almost physical sense of relief. I was like a massively incompetent handyman who'd been up on their roof now for years, trying to take down a gnarled old lightning-struck tree trunk that had fallen against the house, haunting every gathering, all discussions of family business, any attempt they made to sit down together and plan for the future, with the remote but ceaseless whining of my saw. — Michael Chabon

The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling. — Jack Gilbert

Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this."

She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard.

"Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? — Ray Bradbury

The history of man proves that religion perverts man's concept of life and the universe, and has made him a cringing coward before the blind forces of nature.
If you believe that there is a God; that man was 'created'; that he was forbidden to eat of the fruit of the 'tree of knowledge'; that he disobeyed; that he is a 'fallen angel'; that he is paying the penalty for his 'sins,' then you devote your time praying to appease an angry and jealous God.
If, on the other hand, you believe that the universe is a great mystery; that man is the product of evolution; that he is born without knowledge; that intelligence comes from experience, then you devote your time and energies to improving his condition with the hope of securing a little happiness here for yourself and your fellow man.
That is the difference.
If man was 'created,' then someone made a grievous mistake. — Joseph Lewis

Therefore let's live the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten show. But mind you, it's like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. you've severed the connexion between the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are the plucked apple ... you've fallen off the tree. And then it is logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it's a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad. — D.H. Lawrence

Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated. — Margaret Mitchell

Only when a tree has fallen can you take the measure of it. It is the same with a man. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Jacob remained by Mollie's side throughout the night, clinging to her hand as well as to her vow. She wasn't going to leave him. She'd given her word, and Mollie never broke a promise. He prayed. He tended the cuts she'd suffered from the blackberry brambles when she'd fallen. The vines had grown entangled within a cedar's branches, and as best he could tell, she'd climbed the tree in order to reach the ripe berries that other pickers had left behind. Unfortunately, the limb she'd shimmied out on had been weak and had broken beneath her weight. "You know, this tree climbing and dropping through busted church floors is going to have to stop after we're married. My heart won't be able to take the stress." He smiled and ran the back of his finger down the smooth line of her cheek. "Not that I expect any dictate I give you to have much effect. My only hope is that you'll grow to care enough about me that you'll take pity on me and cease taking unnecessary risks with your life. — Karen Witemeyer

He's not-" Daniel started to say. He watched a red-tailed hawk land in an oak tree over their heads. "He's not good enough for you."
Luce had heard people say that line a thousand times before. It was what everyone always said. Not good enough. But when the words passed Daniel's lips, they sounded important, even somehow true and relevant, not vague and dismissive the way the phrase had always sounded to her in the past.
"Well, then," she said in a quiet voice, "who is?"
Daniel put his hands on his hips. He laughed to himself for a long time. "I don't know," he said finally. "That's a terrific question."
Not exactly the answer Luce was looking for. "It's not like it's that hard," she said, stuffing her hands into her pockets because she wanted to reach out for him. "To be good enough for me."
Daniel's eyes looked like they were falling, all the violet that had been in them a moment before turned a deep, dark gray. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it is. — Lauren Kate

You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That's the feeling.
(T.E. Lawrence to artist Eric Kennington, May 1935 ) — T.E. Lawrence

She scoffed at his light tone as she made sure to keep her voice to a whisper like him. "How many sisters did you say you have?" "Three. Why?" "Tell me how it is they let you live this long?" He pointed to the scar on his head. "I assure you, there was no lack of trying to kill me. I'm just really resilient." She followed him over a fallen tree. "Apparently." He — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Duc?' The boy leaned against a twisted willow tree. 'Or bastard? — Becca Fitzpatrick

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine. — Julius Lester

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. — Alan Sillitoe

I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with skin like velvet pushed the wrong way.I sing of the shape a fallen body makes in the dirt beneath a tree, and I sing of an ordinary man who is wanted to know things no human being could tell him.This is the true beginning. — Carolyn Parkhurst

The literature of childhood abounds with evidence that the peaks of a child's experience are not visits to the cinema, or even family outings to the sea, but occasions when he escapes into places that are disused and overgrown and silent. To a child there is more joy in a rubbish tip than a flowery rockery, in a fallen tree than a piece of statuary, in a muddy track than a gravel path. — Iona Opie

He might as well have told she'd fallen out of the ugly tree and hit her face a few extra times on the way down. — Jessica R. Patch

In 2008, I was in a London park when I came across a fledgling crow that had fallen from the top of an oak tree. A woman happened to be passing, and she said that she rescued animals, so she invited me back to her house. It turned out she was the wife of Jeff Beck. Jeff was there, and we ended up jamming together. — Imelda May

Whenever you leave cleared land, when you step from some place carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth, that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what's beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the dead wood of another tree grow fungi black as devil's hooves. Overhead the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches. (from "Revival Road") — Louise Erdrich

But, mind you, it's like this; while you live your life, you are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connection. And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple ... you've fallen off the tree. — D.H. Lawrence

The silence after a felled tree has fallen is like the silence immediately after a death. The same sense of culmination. — John Berger

He led them around the base of a great fallen tree whose exposed roots resembled more than anything else a huge broom - a broom that would have fired the imagination of Rachel the Dragon toward heroic, legendary feats of sweeping. — Tad Williams

pulled into a dark tunnel. I found myself hurtling down an almost vertical dirt path, skipping over rocks and dirt patches like Indiana Jones until I hit bottom with a thud. Six years as a private investigator and I'd never fallen down a tree before. I caught my breath, got to my feet and dusted myself off. Good thing I never dress up for work. My old jeans and boots were none the worse for wear. I was wondering how I'd get back up to the surface when I noticed the flicker of golden sconces on — Linsey Lanier

His hands slipped from his throat, and he crashed to the ground like a tree falling.
"Oh, dear," said Pangborn, gazing at the fallen body of his comrade with fastidious distaste. "How unpleasant. — Cassandra Clare

I've always thought about the theatre like a Christmas tree, all shining and bright with beautiful ornaments. But now it seems like a Christmas tree with the tinsel all tarnished and the colored balls all fallen off and broken ... '
Sure, I know what you mean ... And it's both ways ... Some of the ornaments fall and break and some stay clear and bright. Some of the tinsel gets tarnished and some stays shining and beautiful like the night before Christmas. Nothing's ever all one way. You know that. It's all mixed up and you've just got to find the part that's right for you.'
- Elizabeth and Ben — Madeleine L'Engle

With her silence alone she held off, for a moment longer, the suggestion that the worst was over, the tree had fallen, the storm was passing, and time, as she was given to saying, was marching on: school tomorrow, work for their father, laundry, shopping, meals. For just a moment more, she let them linger. — Alice McDermott

She remembered sitting beneath the tree on a hot July day with someone who looked at her with a longing that took everything else away. And it had been at that moment that she'd first fallen in love. — Nicholas Sparks

People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table. — Connie Willis

A murmur passed through the Clan, and Bluefur wondered if he'd overheard the elders talking about inviting Goosefeather to give up his duties and join them beneath the fallen tree. The old medicine cat was standing with his fur on end and his eyes mad, glaring at nothing. It seemed like it might be a kindness to set him free from his responsibilities and let his denmate take over. — Erin Hunter

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled - the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there? — Herman Melville

When people visit my farm they often envision their dog, finally off-leash in acres of safely fenced countryside, running like Lassie in a television show, leaping over fallen tree trunks, shiny-eyed with joy at the change to run free in the country. While they're imagining that heartwarming scene, their dog is most likely gobbling up sheep poop as fast as he can. Dog aren't people, and if they have their own image of heaven, it most likely involves poop. — Patricia B. McConnell