Roots Branches Quotes & Sayings

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer. — Bernard Baruch

Your life is like this tree, deeply rooted, with a solid foundation and countless branches linking your past throes with future dreams. Every tree faces inevitable storms and strong winds testing the strength of its roots. Branches break; new ones grow. It will flower and leaves will fall. And from your tree new life will emerge. In the end, though, with purpose and perseverance your tree will prevail, and each will be beautifully individual and uniquely different. A full circle of such. — Riley Mackenzie

My life is a tree, yoke fellow of the earth, pledged by roots too deep for remembrance. To stand hard against the storm. To fill my place. (But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing. Wing-free are the wings of my bird; she hath built no mortal nest) — Karle Wilson Baker

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth. — Khalil Gibran

The smile on her face was almost Dante's. Tears pricked his eyes, then hers, while all those impossible things passed between them. While the truth was sending down roots and throwing out branches until it filled the silent room with impossible blossoms.
I love him. — Damon Suede

Spindly branches of buttercups were secreted among gleaming stems still moist at the roots from last night's rain that had washedand refreshed the entire wood, had dowered it in poignant transparency, the unique, inconsolable quality of rainy countries, as if all was glimpsed through tears. — Angela Carter

One of the striking aspects of the lines is the way they make us see a tree, with its pattern of twigs, leaves and branches, as a visual image of the invisible roots of language. — Terry Eagleton

We came from many roots, and we have many branches. — Gerald R. Ford

Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and branches. The family is immortality. And Hitler has destroyed not just branches and roots, but entire family trees, forests. All of them, gone. — Amy Harmon

Change blows through the branches of our existence. It fortifies the roots on which we stand, infuses crimson experience with autumn hues, dismantles Winter's brittle leaves, and ushers Spring into our fertile environments. Seeds of evolution burst from their pod cocoons and teardrop buds blossom into Summer flowers. Change releases its redolent scent, attracting the buzz of honey bees and the adoration of discerning butterflies. — B.G. Bowers

Voices in the forest tell of dark and twisted enchantments - as dark and twisted as the roots and grasping branches of the trees themselves. Even the most gnarled tree is eloquent in the telling of its own tale. — Brian Froud

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves. It is futile to argue as to which leaf, which design of branches, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming. — Bruce Lee

We are people-trees. Our roots are hidden in Earth .The branches spread out on Heavens.
The fruits are our energy.
Two different energies: The positive and negative ones.
The balance of both carries the progress.
Article by Author Katerina Kostaki :The Tree of Gnosis in the Garden of Eden — Katerina Kostaki

One Swaying Being

Love is not condescension, never that,
nor books, nor any marking on paper,
nor what people say of each other.
Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity
and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk!
Have you seen it?
The mind cannot.
Your desiring cannot.
The longing you feel for this love comes from inside you.
When you become the Friend,
your longing will be as the man in the ocean
who holds to a piece of wood.
Eventually wood, man, and ocean
become one swaying being,
Shams Tabriz, the secret of God. — Jalaluddin Rumi

We do what we have to, to live. Sometimes that means breaking a rocks heart, or pushing roots down into ground that screams againest the intrusion. As for you-how else should our children climb to the star's but up our branches? We made our peace with that fact a long time ago, that we would be used and maybe forgotten. So be it. What you learn in your climbing will make all the life on this planet greater, more precious. And when it comes to that, who writes the things written in your body, your life? And who reads?-Our cases aren't that much different? — Diane Duane

Things have their roots and branches. Affairs have their beginnings and their ends. To know what is first and what is last will lead one near the Way. — Confucius

Our doctrinal obligation is to our own ancestors. This is because the celestial organization of heaven is based on families. The First Presidency has encouraged members, especially youth and young single adults, to emphasize family history work and ordinances for their own family names or the names of ancestors of their ward and stake members. We need to be connected to both our roots and branches. The thought of being associated in the eternal realm is indeed glorious. — Quentin L. Cook

As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches . — J.R.R. Tolkien

We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual. — Harry Emerson Fosdick

Japanese gardeners, over many centuries, have learned to do things to trees, to clip their roots or trim their branches, to limit their supply of water, air, or sun, so that they live, and for a long time, but only in tiny, shrunken, twisted shapes. Such trees may please us, or they may not. But what could they tell us about the nature of trees? If a tree can be deformed and shrunk, is this, then, its nature? The nature of these trees, given enough of the sun, air, water, soil, and food they need, is to grow like trees, tall and straight. People can be more easily deformed, and worse deformed, even than trees - and more than trees, they feel it, it hurts. But — John Holt

A tree stands strong not by its fruits or branches, but by the depth of its roots. — Anthony Liccione

We are more than our feelings. Feelings are like leaves and flowers on the tree of our being. They are the first to dance in the breeze, the first to blossom in springtime, the first to sparkle in the rain. But come the cold and frost, we discover that the bare branches of our values and the roots of our traditions are the structure we stand on. — Manjul Bajaj

The love of truth is the stimulus to all noble conversation. This is the root of all the charities. The tree which springs from it may have a thousand branches, but they will all bear a golden and generous fruitage. — Orville Dewey

Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots. — David Novak

grove," but its primary meaning for more than 1,000 years has remained the same. It is a small grouping of trees that bind themselves together over time, both above ground and below it. The trees' branches become intertwined with one another, providing stability to the grove in severe storms. The trees' roots also grow together, strengthening the stature of every individual trunk. — James Beran

Thus, in truth, a sojourn in Rome means an expansion of view that is beyond words. Whereas up to that time I had been accustomed to image Christianity to myself as a delicate flower, divine because of its supernatural fragility, now I saw that it was a tree in whose branches the fowls of the air, once the enemies of its tender growth, can lodge in security - divine since the wideness of its reach and the strength of its mighty roots can be accounted for by nothing else. Before I had thought of it as of a fine, sweet aroma, to be appreciated apart; now I saw that it was the leaven, hid in the heavy measures of the world, expressing itself in terms incalculably coarser than itself, until the whole is leavened. — Robert Hugh Benson

I think I'm beginning to understand
how hearts fit together.
Not like diseased carnations that lean against their crutches.
Not like vines that twine tight, throttling their hosts.
But like two trees:
two systems of deep, untangled roots,
two patterns of flowering branches,
whose leaves drink their own sunlight
and breathe their own air.
Two trees with something slung between them,
a hammock or a tapestry or a swing,
some third, beautiful thing
that neither would die without.
Hearts fit together like hands.
Not by necessity.
By choice. — Riley Redgate

A strong woman has waited patiently while her roots grew down deep into the Word of God. Over time, she becomes unshakeable in her faith. She starts bearing fruit naturally and is full of life. People are attracted to her strength and growth, and many find rest and peace as they lean on her. And when storms and trials come, as they always do, they will not be able to take her down. A few branches may be lost or pruned away, but in their place comes new growth, new life. This is what I long to be! A strong woman who is anchored in God's promises. But it starts by setting down your roots in God's Word. It will not happen as you stand up for yourself, and demand attention, and fight for yourself. It will happen as you stand in Christ, and demand that He gets your attention, and fight for His glory. The beautiful thing is that as we pursue this, God takes His rightful place in our lives. — Francis Chan

The world citizen is a small leaf on the giant tree of life. They do not see a difference between the branch they were born on and the remaining branches on the tree, because they understand well that we are are all connected to the same roots. The world citizen sees each section of the world as part of their arm, leg, eyes, and heart. They do not class, contain or separate themselves or their identity by ethnicity or religion -- because they see their existence as a small part of a greater whole. When asked about their religion, the world citizen simply replies: 'My heart. — Suzy Kassem

Poetry is a tree with very deep roots and while there may be excitement about this or that new little branch, you're not going to make anything original by just doing whatever's being rewarded at the moment. — Joan Larkin

That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, or why he found it so repellent. — Neil Gaiman

They shake hands - the solid, down-to-earth man and the restless, unpredictable lightning in the sky. I feel like a tree exposed to the elements, my roots clinging to the soil, my branches flirting with heaven. — Leylah Attar

Alia glares down at us. She is as colossal as Ragnar, but ancient and wicked, like the oldest tree of some primeval forest. The kind that drinks the soil and blocks the sun for lesser trees and watches them wither and yellow and die and does nothing but reach her branches higher and dig her roots deeper. — Pierce Brown

Sometimes, you may think you have fallen into an abyss ... when in fact, you've just descended to the roots ... of the tree of life! Somewhere along your climb, you got lost amongst the branches, and lost in the darkness of the branches, the only way to find the straight way up would be to return to the roots! And from there amongst the roots, you will be able to look straight up and see the top again! And begin your ascent! — C. JoyBell C.

When I was a real girl, my mother fed me her glass dreams one spoonful at a time. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Duke. Undergrad. Med school. Internship, residency, God. She'd brush my hair and braid it with long words, weaving the Latin roots and Greek branches into my head so memorizing anatomy would come easy. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I seem restless,
but am deeply at ease.
Branches tremble;
the roots are still. — Rumi

The native calls the baobab 'the devil tree' because he claims that the devil, getting tangled in its branches, punished by the tree by reversing it. To the native, the roots are branches now, and the branches are roots. To ensure that there would be no more baobabs, the devil destroyed all the young ones. — Jerzy Kosinski

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know? — Gabrielle Zevin

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one. — Elizabeth Moon

This may be done by grafting, by confining the roots, withholding water, bending the branches, or in a hundred other ways which all proceed upon the same principle. — Robert Fortune

Blessed be the discipline which makes me reach out my soul's roots into closer union with Jesus! Blessed be the dews of the Spirit which keep my leaf ever green! Blessed be the trials which shake down the ripe, golden fruits from the branches. — Theodore L. Cuyler

I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself. — Edward Steichen

Every time you feel lost, confused, think about trees, remember how they grow. Remember that a tree with lots of branches and few roots will get toppled by the first strong wind, while the sap hardly moves in a tree with many roots and few branches. Roots and branches must grow in equal measure, you have to stand both inside of things and above them, because only then will you be able to offer shade and shelter, only then will you be able to cover yourself with leaves and fruit at the proper season.
And later on, when so many roads open up before you, you don't know which to take, don't pick one at random; sit down and wait. Breathe deeply, trustingly, the way you breathed on the day when you came into the world, don't let anything distract you, wait and wait some more. Stay still, be quiet, and listen to your heart. Then, when it speaks, get up and go where it takes you. — Susanna Tamaro

Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer. — Henry Ward Beecher

Can you hear the wind, father?
Remember what mother used to say about the wind?

The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots.

You are still breathing..

As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight.
You breathe. Keep breathing.

When there is a storm..
And you stand in front of a tree..
If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall.
But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability. — Alejandro G. Inarritu

As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth. People either neglect the root and speak of the branches, or neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world and speak only of Enlightenment. Or else they chatter of cosmic activities leading to transformations, while neglecting the Substance from which they spring
indeed, there is NEVER any profit in discussion. — Huangbo Xiyun

He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things. — Michael Montoure

Like a tree that grows stronger with more branches and roots, you need to find more and more ways to be inspired, — Yiannis Kouros

A Tree with strong roots and Branches will overcome every Storm and will have every Year new Leaves. — Jan Jansen

Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but universality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. Let us throw all the windows open; let us admit the light and air on all sides; that we may look towards the four corners of the heavens, and not always in the same direction. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

On tobacco: A branch of the sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins. — King James I

Sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time. Indeed, it is precisely at those moments when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born. — Reza Aslan

Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so. — Mahatma Gandhi

Even the highest branches cannot deny that they have roots in a common bond. — K.M. Tepe

We're still who we are at the roots. I reckon, hopefully, you let it branch out a little bit and you learn. You live and learn, so that's what we've tried to do. — Eddie Montgomery

Last year in the region where we live part of the year there were violent windstorms, whole forests were leveled, two- and three-hundred-year-old trees torn up by the roots and tossed aside, houses sliced almost in half by the once-sheltering giants flung down through their roofs. Yesterday another storm, powerful but less so, took down no trees. The ground, though, is littered with leaves, as though autumn had arrived, but the leaves are still green, still alive, many torn away in clumps, with the twigs still intact that attached them to their branches. There's something disconsolate about them - the desiccated leaves of autumn always appear to have found the place to which they've been destined, but these don't seem to grasp what's happened to them: they lie on the ground at awkward angles, like things wounded that haven't completely given in to death and don't know yet they must. — C. K. Williams

O Tree of God - Tree of Life, In the gift of your shade, I stand, my heart raised to your Creator. Your branches call me to reach out in all directions to many people. Your branches remind me of the sheltering arms of God. Your roots call me to be rooted in all that is good and nourishing. Your roots ask me to spend time in the ground of my being. Teach me, like you, to praise God in the silence of my being. Help me to surrender unnecessary words. Draw me, like a magnet, into the abiding love of God. And when it is time for me to die, teach me to die gracefully and joyfully. Teach me to let go as you let go of your leaves each autumn. In living and in dying, teach me to praise God by living well and dying well. May it come to pass! — Macrina Wiederkehr

Images barraged him. Connections darted electric. Veins. Roots. Forked lightning. Tributaries. Branches. Vines snaked around trees, herds of animals, drops of water running together.

I don't understand.

Fingers twined together. Shoulder leaned on shoulder. Fist bumping fist. Hand dragging Adam up from the dirt.

Cabeswater rifled madly through Adam's own memories and flashed them through his mind. It hurled images of Gansey, Ronan, Noah, and Blue so fast that Adam couldn't keep up with all of them.

Then the grid of lightning blasted across the world, an illuminated grid of energy.

Adam still did not understand, and then he did.

There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more of whatever it was. — Maggie Stiefvater

Herding them all toward the basement, their father paused at the dining-room window, pulled back the curtain and shone the beam through the window and out into the darkness until it caught the yawning base of the doomed tree. After only a quick glimpse, a glimpse that was like a gulp of foul air, Jacob pulled at his mother's hand to draw her to safety. But Michael lingered, and even Annie squirmed out of her father's arms to stand by the window, her two hands on the painted sill. The roots reared out of the black ground, the trunk leaned and then straightened, the long branches swung this way and that. Their mother patted Jacob's hand to soothe him. On their way through the kitchen she took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and the remaining paper cups from their picnic. They followed their father's flashlight down the wooden steps. It was a tunnel of light and it seemed to draw — Alice McDermott

In the Twenties, it wasn't a remarkable thing for a singer to be an actor, or even to be involved in politics. If this is our roots, how can you blame the branches for following the course of the roots. — Terrence Howard

The night is about to lull everything and everyone to sleep. I stretch myself at the window and open it so that the books can breathe fresh damp air. I suspect that books need to breathe like people, and I think they tolerate damp better than people say. There is no doubt that they stare rather sadly at the trees out in the garden, as if they have a vague recollection of relationship with them, and sighs are borne from the pages to the damp trunks and branches.
I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off from their roots in a wild whirlwind eons ago - that is my thory of evolution. — Gyrdir Eliasson

Can you imagine an infinite tree? ... A tree whose roots snake down all the way to the bottomest bottom of everything? ... if you've ever looked at a tree you've seen how its trunk divides into boughs, which divide yet again to branches, which divide into twigs, which divide again into twiglings. The whole mess splaying out in all directions, jutting and twisting and zigzagging. At the tips of the tips you might have a million tiny green shoots, scattered like the sparks of an exploding skyrocket. — Michael Chabon

My father gave me a ruined boy to compensate for the fact that he does not love me.
The boy is fragile, broken - broke himself - broke everything.
I asked him why he did it. He said because the world was unlivable. He said it was unlovable, but I think he meant himself. I think he meant that loneliness is sometimes painful.
I curl against him, tuck my head beneath his chin and listen to his heart. It says stay and wait. It says regret. He knows what it is to want love, a love so fierce you grow roots. I hear his heart say please.
He went looking for angels and found me instead, girl of the sorrows, sad but not sorry. I waited for a sign, a star to fall. He reached for a knife and drew branches. — Brenna Yovanoff

I will make rigid my roots and branches. It is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers. — W.B.Yeats

If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together, you can feel everything growing. We're all living together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree. — Hue

Just as I can't see a clear brook without at least stopping to dangle my feet in it, I can't see a meadow in May and simply pass by. There is nothing more seductive then such fragrant earth, the blossoms of clover swaying above it like a light foam, and the petal-bedecked branches of the fruit trees reaching upward, as if they wanted to rescue themselves from this tranquil sea. No, I have to turn from my path and immerse myself in this richness ...
When I turn my head, my cheek grazes the rough trunk of the apple tree next to me. How protectively it spreads its good branches over me. Without ceasing the sap rises from its roots, nuturing even the smallest of leaves. Do I hear, perhaps, a secret heartbeat? I press my face against its dark, warm bark and think to myself: homeland, and am so indescribably happy in this instant. — Sophie Scholl

Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores. Above the waves, dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. In these woods nights are quiet, save for the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws climbing up, clambering down. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes quietly and mostly by day. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place. — Sheri S. Tepper

It is quite affecting to observe how much the olive tree is to the country people. Its fruit supplies them with food, medicine and light; its leaves, winter fodder for the goats and sheep; it is their shelter from the heat and its branches and roots supply them with firewood. The olive tree is the peasant's all-in-all. — Fredrika Bremer

Eventually it will require more nutrients to maintain the branches and roots that do not grow quite far out enough to capture those nutrients. Once it exceeds the limitations of its environment, it loses all. And this is why you must trim a tree periodically in order to preserve it. — Hope Jahren

Love for Kuwait is always prior to self-love, money, and children.. In the heart of every Kuwaiti, Kuwait's love grew it's seeds, spread its roots and branches all around our good land — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Some people are like branches. They sway away even with a gentle breeze. Others, the ones like roots, can only be shaken if there is a hurricane.

Stay with latter - they keep the relationship stable. And, do remember not to stir the hurricane by lies or deceit.
#Stability — Saru Singhal

That's my little piece of heaven. Go ahead."
Ciro followed Remo through the open door to a small enclosed garden. Terra-cotta pots positioned along the top of the stone wall spilled over with red geraniums and orange impatiens. An elm tree with a wide trunk and deep roots filled the center of the garden. Its green leaves and thick branches reached past the roof of Remo's building, creating a canopy over the garden. There was a small white marble birdbath, gray with soot, flanked by two deep wicker armchairs.
Remo fished a cigarette out of his pocket, offering another to Ciro as both men took a seat. "This is where I come to think."
"Va bene," Ciro said as he looked up into the tree. He remembered the thousands of trees that blanketed the Alps; here on Mulberry Street, one tree with peeling gray bark and holes in its leaves was cause for celebration. — Adriana Trigiani

I want to grow roots and vines from my body and ensnare him forever in my branches. No wonder we scare men away. — Wendy Wunder

From the seed grows a root, then a sprout; from the sprout, the seedling leaves; from the leaves, the stem; around the stem, the branches; at the top, the flower ... We cannot say that the seed causes the growth, nor that the soil does. We can say that the potentialities for growth lie within the seed, in mysterious life forces, which, when properly fostered, take on certain forms. — Mary Caroline Richards

Telling a story is like sowing a seed - you always hope to see it become a beautiful tree, with firm roots and branches that soar up in the sky. But it is a peculiar sowing, for you will never know whether your seed sprouts or dies. — Laila Lalami

Do the roots reveal everything to the branches, or do they keep what is painful to themselves? — Sinan Antoon

The campus spreads around him like the verdant pleasure garden of an ancient king. He is enraptured by the enormous trees that lift branches like cathedral roofs overhead, shoot roots like polished ballroom floors underfoot. In the hot afternoons he leaves the crowded rooms to study under the protection of these spreading giants. — Nayomi Munaweera

Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see. — Robert M. Pirsig

We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone's familiar with that. I think the same thing occurs with whole civilizations when expansion's needed at the roots. — Robert M. Pirsig

There is a fable in the forest
Whispered by the branches, as they blow.
A tale about the truth of leaving
Things that no longer help you grow.
For on the surface it looks simple,
Like you only need lace your boots,
But there is nothing quite as painful
As untangling your roots.
And proof is found in tree stumps
Of the price some pay to flee,
That they would cut their lives in half
To cut the time before they're free.
Yet from the little left behind
Life has been known to grow again,
For unless you take your roots
A part of you will still remain. — Erin Hanson

It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree, and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Kuwait is an origin, and her regulations are branches, so be devoted to the origin, the roots will be insured. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

After I did the drawings of trees combining them with words, I started doing - I did that for a very short time. Then it kind of - that sort of evolved into just showing the branches of a tree coming down into the trunk and then going into the root system. So I showed both the branches and the roots of a tree, which were about equal. There is as much going on under the ground as is going on above the ground, which you can see. — Robert Barry

What we have got to do now is use this event, the resignation of the whole commission, to drive through root and branch reform. — Tony Blair

When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again! — Willa Cather

Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots. — Rumi

And yet the two young people had never declared their affection; they had grown together like two trees whose roots are mingled, whose branches intertwine and whose intermingled perfume rises to the heavens. — Alexandre Dumas

But when I lean over the chasm of myself -
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.

More I don't know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind. — Rainer Maria Rilke

We have roots that grow towards each other underground. And when all the pretty blossom has fallen from our branches we find that we are one tree and not two. — Louis De Bernieres

Branches grew from his hands, his hair. His thoughts tangled like roots in the ground. He strained upward. Pitch ran like tears down his back. His name formed his core; ring upon ring of silence built around it. His face rose high above the forests. Gripped to earth, bending to the wind's fury, he disappeared within himself, behind the hard, wind-scrolled shield of his experiences. — Patricia A. McKillip

I realized that a tree never says, "I have too many branches." It simply digs deeper roots, expands itself to catch more light, and extends itself in multiple directions so as not to be unevenly weighted. — Brenda Strong

Wherever the tree of beneficence takes root, it sends forth branches beyond the sky! — Saadi

I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too. — Elan Mastai

A cold front had rumbled through in the night, left its rain behind in wide, deep puddles that reflected the first autumn sky of the year, the kind of blue so startling children demand a reason. They reflected the trees that rose out of them, too, as if those trees had no roots but reached with their branches as deep into a sky at our feet as they did into the one above our heads, as if you could take one step and fall forever upwards. The world was a bright, strange place, I thought, where none of us belonged. — Matthew Griffin

Losing myself interests me. The fertile topsoil interests me, sprawling beneath a light dusting of snow, and the snow that crams the trunks and branches of the pines and elms and redwoods, having frozen up their roots, subdues me to consider life and death. What lurks beneath the ground? Surely dead seeds and frozen worms reside deep below that earth, and surely all those presentiments of life lying dormant, dead or dying, scattered and mute, like memories. — S.K. Kalsi

Like the trees, his roots went deep, and I daydreamed that if he wrapped me in his arms, he could safely tuck me away within his branches and hide me from the world. He was shaken by nothing. He feared noting. — Colleen Houck

Better extirpate the whole breed, root and branch. And this, unless the German people come to their senses, is what we propose to do. — Gertrude Atherton

Indeed, beauty is one of mankind's greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness. — Pope Benedict XVI

The later rain,
it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste,
As if it would each root's lost strength repair. — Jones Very