Quotes & Sayings About Sitting In A Tree

I shall go and sit under a tree ... . Which tree, Mma? ... Oh, there are many trees in this life, she said. It does not matter which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one. — Alexander McCall Smith

I think of my brother sitting at the top of a tree, in California. He no longer knows who he's writing tom because I have surely changed beyond all recognition. And I no longer know who's writing. I think of him as staying always the same, but of course this can't be true. He must know things by now that he didn't know before, as I do. — Margaret Atwood

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? — Ralph Marston

You are pathetic, Rache," Jenks said, and my eyes darted to the top of the rack and I saw him standing there, hands on his hips and frowning at me, his wings a silver blur. "Rachel and Trent, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. No wait, it was a hospital room, and he had his hands on your ass and you had your tongue down his throat. I can see why you might be confused. — Kim Harrison

We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten. — Greg Bear

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can't miss it. — Alice Walker

Loretta started belting out a song: "Row, row, row your boat, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G ! — Joel N. Ross

She's a blackbird sitting in a tree staring out at the world, daring the wind to come and knock her off the swaying bough. — J.A. Huss

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — Warren Buffett

Deep down inside we know that the best gifts don't come from catalogs or shopping malls. They don't come in brightly-colored packages or fancy envelopes and they're not sitting under a tree somewhere ... The best gifts come from the heart. They come when we look at each other, REALLY look at each other and say 'You mean a lot to me' or 'I'm so glad you're a part of my life.' A gift like that will never go out of style or be forgotten or be returned for a different size. A gift like that can change the world. — Ron Atchison

I remember sitting and meditating beside a slow flowing river in India, and I got the feeling that this river could teach me all the secrets of the mystery of life. If we learn to surrender to a stone, a flower, to a man, to a woman, or a river, it becomes a door to the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, "What road do I take?"
The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it really doesn't matter, does it? — Lewis Carroll

I did become homesick, and whenever that happened, I'd hide away in the school library, where the books filled rows and rows of shelves. I'd find a chair and study my lesson books in geography, social studies, biology, and math. I'd lose myself in American and African history, and within the colorful maps of the world. No matter how foreign and lonely the world was outside, the books always reminded me of home, sitting under the mango tree. — William Kamkwamba

In other languages,
you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone- picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hate
about stars is they're not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you
you're not those candles either, how often I realize
I'm not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I'd be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say. — Bob Hicok

Yesterday, I was collecting words.
One was up there, sitting in the bo tree,
Another was in the banyan.
One was wandering in my street,
Another was lying in the earthen jar.
A green word lay in the fields,
A black one was eating flesh.
A blue word was flying
With a grain of the sun in its beak.
Every single thing in this world looks like a word to me.
The words of eyes,
The words of hands.
But I do not understand words I hear from a mouth.
I can only read words.
I can only read words. — Shiv Kumar Batalvi

I passed a group of theater students or hippies (sometimes it's hard to tell) sitting in a circle under an oak tree. — Ellie Alexander

One important thing was not to forget what he hoped to achieve in life. Another important thing was not to confuse a romantic picture of himself - as a doctor in Africa, for example - with a real possibility. And he tried not to lose sight of the fact that he was an adult in an adult world, with responsibilities. This was not easy: he would find himself sitting in the sun cutting out paper stars for a Christmas tree at the very moment other men were working to support large families or representing their countries in foreign places. When in moments of difficult truth-seeking he saw this incongruity, he felt sick that he should be saddled with himself, as though he were his own unwanted guest. — Lydia Davis

Wasn't Pan sitting in a tree watching to see how I would comport myself? Wasn't his belly open, and wasn't he hunched over so that he seemed to be drinking from his own belly? But all this he did only so he could cock his eye and watch me, and the whole tree shook from his silent laughter when he saw that my thoughts were running away with me. — Knut Hamsun

Freedom may be mankind's natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling. — Terry Pratchett

Boy, it sure was some strange Christmas, she told herself as she opened the living room door. And then she stopped dead. Because her present wasn't under the huge lighted Christmas tree. It was sitting on the sofa, looking toward her furiously, with a glass of whiskey in one lean hand. "Merry Christmas," Winthrop said curtly.
Her mouth flew open. He had a bow stuck on the pocket of his gray vested suit, and he looked hung over and pale and a little disheveled. But he was so handsome that her heart skipped wildly, and she looked into his dark eyes with soft dreams in her own.
"You've got a bow on your pocket," she said in a voice that sounded too high-pitched to be her own.
"Of course I've got a bow on my pocket. I'm your damned Christmas present. Didn't you listen to your father? — Diana Palmer

I can't imagine deer hunting. I used to think I couldn't imagine deer hunting because killing a deer seemed so awful. But now I think about just sitting in a tree and doing nothing all day and probably not even seeing a deer. Not moving and sitting in a tree? That seems rough. — Joel Stein

It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits...Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No, there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit. — D.H. Lawrence

As they pushed through the door a remarkable sight met their eyes: the Muskrat was sitting in the fork of a tree eating a pear.
"Where's mother?" asked Moomintroll.
"She's trying to get your father out of his room," replied the Muskrat, bitterly. "This is what comes of collecting plants. I've never quite trusted that Hemulen. Well, I hope the Muskrat heaven is a peaceful place, because I shan't be here much longer. — Tove Jansson

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind. — Shannon Hale

It was possible that there were other vus of which he had never heard and that one of these other vus would explain succinctly the baffling phenomenon of which he had been both a witness and a part; it was even possible that none of what he thought had taken place, really had taken place, and that he was dealing with an aberration of memory rather than of perception, that he never really had thought he had seen what he now thought he once did think he had seen, that his impression now that he once had thought so was merely the illusion of an illusion, and that he was only now imagining that he had ever once imagined seeing a naked man sitting in a tree at the cemetery. — Joseph Heller

The kiss wasn't just any kiss. No, it was a tricky little bastard, because it started out soft and gentle, but shifted gears in a matter of seconds. The moment her response went from surprise to surrender, the kiss turned hard and hungry, launching us into a frenzy of movement. Her arms were around my neck, my hands were moving all over her body, and somehow, in a span of about five seconds, she climbed up me like a tree, her legs wrapped tightly around my waist.
We spun and bumped into the counter. I reached behind my back with one hand to tighten the cross of her ankles. And then I had her sitting on the edge of the stovetop, my hands exploring the tops of her thighs. I pushed the ruffled skirt hem up and clasped on to her bare, silky skin. Her tongue dove to the back of my throat, sliding over mine like wet, slick velvet.
Holy mother fuck, I couldn't breathe. I was drowning in this girl. — Rachael Wade

You can't see a forest when you're sitting in a tree. You can, however, describe the leaves. That's how you learn to see. — Barbara Ware Holmes

And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach. Mr — Virginia Woolf

I remember Mitchell Sanders sitting quietly in the shade of an old banyan tree. He was using a thumbnail to pry off the body lice, working slowly, carefully depositing the lice in a blue USO envelope. His eyes were tired. It had been a long two weeks in the bush. After an hour or so he sealed up the envelope, wrote FREE in the upper right-hand corner, and addressed it to his draft board in Ohio. — Tim O'Brien

Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn't know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but its unaware of the boy who's come into the garden with a net. Three creatures - the cicada, the mantis and the oriole - all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming. — Lisa See

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that's a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I sit cross-legged on the rock The valleys and streams are cold and damp Sitting quietly is beautiful The cliffs are lost in mist and fog I rest happily in this place At dusk the tree shadows are low I look into my mind A white lotus emerges from the dark mud — Hanshan

I wanted to puke, and from the intense paint stench that was assaulting my nasal passages. Sage wanted Gaberot, Not Tucker, not Joe, but Gabe. It was all too gross to contemplate. So of course my brain couldn't stop contemplating it.
Sage and Gabe-rot sitting in the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
We worked in silence for a few minutes while I fumed. How could she grill me about Gabe when she was already dating Mr.Perfect? If only Daniel were here to hear all of this instead of sitting back at SDH oblivious.
"So are you and Gabe, like close?" Sage asked.
Ugh!
"Very close," I said, tilting my head to one side,"Incestuous,actually. He's a fabulous kisser. — Kieran Scott

Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?" when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it any further. | So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up," she said to herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes a rather handsome pig, I think." And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, "if one only knew the right way to change them--" when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. — Lewis Carroll

Talk about songs that make me cry: Track 7 on the 'Phineas and Ferb' soundtrack, 'Summer (Where Do We Begin?).' When you get to the part about sitting with your brother underneath the shade of a big tree in the backyard, ohmygod. Turn on the waterworks. — Christopher Gorham

So the first thing to be remembered: don't confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative - and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known. — Rajneesh

Tree sitting is a last resort. When you see someone sitting in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society has failed. — Julia Hill

It still hurt her to see their poems before her, printed in the curving Yeged-dai script, using Yegedin forms and the images so beloved of the Yegedin: the single pebble, the grasshopper at twilight, the song of a heartbroken lark sitting in a bent tree. — Yoon Ha Lee

Karina and Tho-orn, sitting in a tree-ee. Kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee. — John Flanagan

THE FOX AND THE CROW
A Crow was sitting on a branch of a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak when a Fox observed her and set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese. Coming and standing under the tree he looked up and said, "What a noble bird I see above me! Her beauty is without equal, the hue of her plumage exquisite. If only her voice is as sweet as her looks are fair, she ought without doubt to be Queen of the Birds." The Crow was hugely flattered by this, and just to show the Fox that she could sing she gave a loud caw. Down came the cheese, of course, and the Fox, snatching it up, said, "You have a voice, madam, I see: what you want is wits. — Aesop

It is a sunny fall afternoon and I'm engaged in one of my favorite pastimes - picking chestnuts. I'm playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. My mother is sitting on a bench nearby, rocking the buggy in which my sister is asleep. The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I'm holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me. — Eva Hoffman

If you are sitting on a felled tree in a pine forest enjoying the sunshine you can easily forget what time it is. Not that you could forget your gold watch, just the time of day. — Elfriede Jelinek

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of
ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs. — Eckhart Tolle

He arched a brow. "Miss Lahey, are you flirting with me?"
"Well, hot stuff, if you have to ask, I'm not doing it right."
His laughter rumbled low, slithering heat underneath my skin. I pulled him to me, backing him against the table, risking a literal firestorm as his lips laid upon mine with a burning promise of
"That's how babies are made!"
I reeled back and knocked over a chair. "Aunt M!"
"Sex kills!"
"M, seriously." Mom walked into the kitchen and rolled her eyes.
My aunt patted her belly. "It killed my waistline." Then she cackled.
Who was the banshee now?
"Ayden and Rory sitting in a tree," Selena sing-songed, "making b-a-b-b-y-n-g."
"Mom!"
"Selena," Mom admonished. "That's not the right spelling. — A&E Kirk

I found a treehouse. I found this weird tree, out in a field, and someone had put a piece of a fence, way up in a tree. I just went up there and went to sleep for a few hours, in full cowboy regalia. And someone did take a photo. I have a photo of it, somewhere. It brought me back to when I was 12 years old, sitting in a treehouse and imagining that I was in a Western somewhere. — James Badge Dale

Mitchell sanders was sitting under a banyan tree and using a thumbnail to pry off all the body lice, working slowly, carefully depositing them in a USO envelope. When he was done he sealed the envelope, wrote 'Free' in the right hand corner, and sent it to his draft board in ohio. — Tim O'Brien

And then she started climbing/ The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree
way, way up in the tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree
what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning. She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!" Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree ... " Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind? — Wendelin Van Draanen

Why was she sitting in a tree?"
"She was hiding from the organ thieves."
Ric blinked. "Sorry?"
"Do you really want me to explain it?"
"Not particularly. — Shelly Laurenston

She slept beneath a tree that night, sitting upright. She imagined she would have been scared for her life out in the open, for she was often terrified in her own room at home, even after double-locking the windows and covering the glass with quilts. Instead, she felt an odd calm spirit here in the wilderness. Was this the way people felt at the instant they leapt into rivers and streams? Was it like this when you fell in love, stood on the train tracks, went to a country where no one spoke your language? That was the country she was in most of the time, a place where people heard what she said but not what she meant. She wanted to be known, but no one knew her. — Alice Hoffman

Without the sleeping bag I'm just somebody up early in the morning, sitting under a tree. With the sleeping bag I'm nobody up early, sitting under a tree: a slight, but important difference in how I'll be perceived. — Craig Stone

I had very low self-esteem. Books saved me. I found friends in stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. During lunch hour at school I'd avoid social interactions by sitting on the bathroom sink and reading. My mother worked in my school cafeteria. When my anxiety got really bad, I'd put a coat on, grab my book and a flashlight, and hide in the freezer with the mac and cheese. — Jenny Lawson

I originally welcomed the mobile phone, as it seemed to me that it would enable you to work from anywhere. On the mobile, who was to know if you were sitting on the branch of a tree or sitting in an office? But it instead had the opposite effect: instead of freeing us from the office, it allowed the office to take away our freedom. — Tom Hodgkinson

I learned more sitting under a tree than I did in a classroom. The teacher told me God did not exist; the tree, and everything around it, told me He did. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Under business as usual, by mid-century things are looking rather grim," he told me a few hours after I had arrived at One Tree. We were sitting at a beat-up picnic table, looking out over the heartbreaking blue of the Coral Sea. The island's large and boisterous population of terns was screaming in the background. Caldeira paused: "I mean, they're looking grim already. — Elizabeth Kolbert

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars - even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The — Henry David Thoreau

When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman. — Diana Gabaldon

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. — Betty Smith

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, [ ... ] and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names [ ... ] I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest ... — Sylvia Plath

As we drove up, Mr. Flowers himself was sitting beneath a tree out front, having a smoke. He was a wiry old white guy with the most unusual facial hair I had ever laid eyes on. If in fact it was facial hair, because it wasn't quite that simple. Mr. Flowers's prodigious muttonchops, once white but now stained yellow by tobacco smoke, had somehow managed to merge with the equally prodigious yellowish-white hair sprouting from his chest. I didn't want to stare, but they appeared to form a single integrated unit, and if so represented a bold advance in human adornment. — Michael Pollan

A couple weeks later Blake worked up to walking to the coffee shop by himself - and most other places too. Eve had watched from behind a tree the afternoon she found him sitting on the patio, just basking in the sun. That very night Blake had proposed to Livia with their great-grandmother's ring. And Livia had said yes. — Debra Anastasia

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans. — Hermann Hesse

No, I don't party; no, I don't dress in black leather and chains; that's not my style. That's how I was raised. I worry about getting good grades and I go to church and I watch sci-fi movies and I generally follow the rules. Most people would call me a geek or a nerd. You've called me that many times. But that isn't everything that defines me. I mean, look at me, sitting here in a rainstorm under a tree that's probably going to kill us when the lightning hits it, holding the hand of a pretty cool girl who really is the opposite of me, a girl that I happen to be in love with. A girl I couldn't have imagined would want to be with me. But here she is, letting me hold her hand, trying to tell me why she isn't good enough for me. That's crazy. — Cindy C. Bennett

The house was quiet. Silently, I walked down the stairs and passed the peacock room where I found Mr. Kadam sitting and waiting for me. He took my bag and walked with me out to the car, then he opened my door, and I slid in to the seat and buckled my seatbelt. Starting the car, he circled the stone driveway slowly. I turned to take one last look at the beautiful place that felt like home. As we started down the tree-lined road, I watched the house until the trees blocked my view.
Just then, a deafening, heartrending roar shook the trees. I turned in my seat and faced the desolate road ahead. — Colleen Houck

What about you?" I ask her. "What do you think I should read next?" She takes my hand and leads me to the children's section. She looks around for a second, then heads over to a display at the front. I see a certain green book sitting there and panic. "No! Not that one!" I say. But she isn't reaching for the green book. She's reaching for Harold and the Purple Crayon. "What could you possibly have against Harold and the Purple Crayon?" she asks. "I'm sorry. I thought you were heading for The Giving Tree." Rhiannon looks at me like I'm an insane duck. "I absolutely HATE The Giving Tree." I am so relieved. "Thank goodness. That would've been the end of us, had that been your favorite book." "Here - take my arms! Take my legs!" "Take my head! Take my shoulders!" "Because that's what love's about!" "That kid is, like, the jerk of the century," I say, relieved that Rhiannon will know what I mean. "The biggest jerk in the history of all literature, — David Levithan

How could the war have any semblance of reality when you found yourself sitting under a plane tree in a playground, in the provincial calm of an early afternoon? — Patrick Modiano

To me the statues of Buddha and Mahavira in the East, sitting in a lotus posture under a tree, do not mean anything historical. They mean something far more significant. These are the people who have stopped running. These are the people who have stepped out of the road on which the whole procession of humanity is going. They are real dropouts, not the California type which within a few years drops in again. — Osho

Yeah, you're sitting in a tree because you're fine. That's easy to see. I can't believe this is Maximum Ride, destroyer of despots, warrior hottie, leader of the flock! All you need now to make yourself more pathetic is a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream! — James Patterson

When it comes to the education of our young, this privilege should only be given to those whose visions are solely in the uplifting benefit of the child. There is no room for the ego in the education of children! Children should not be looked after, nor educated, by those who have not made a sacrifice within their hearts, laying down their own personal agenda and dreams, for the total ascension of the child. Even if you are to educate the children simply sitting under a tree; if you have the vision and the heart of a sage, those children will grow to be mighty men and women under your watch! And even if you wine and dine the children, putting them up in a palace; if you do not have the vision and the selfless heart of a sage, all you do is in utter vanity! — C. JoyBell C.

Imagine you are walking in the woods and you see a small dog sitting by a tree. As you approach it, it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. You are frightened and angry. But then you notice that one of its legs is caught in a trap. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern: You see that the dog's aggression is coming from a place of vulnerability and pain. This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of trap. The more we look through the eyes of wisdom at ourselves and one another, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart. — Tara Brach

I say, did you hear me?" The old man shook a worn walking stick at the oak. "I said move it and I meant it! I was sitting on that rock" -he pointed to a boulder- "enjoying the rising sun on my old bones when you had the nerve to cast a shadow over it and chill me! Move this instant. I say!" The tree did not respond. It also did not move. "I won't take any more of your insolence!" The old man began to beat on the tree with his stick. "Move or I'll - I'll -" "Someone shut that looney in a cage!" Fewmaster Toede shouted, galloping back from the front of the caravan. "Get your hands off me!" the old man shreiked at the draconians who ran up and accosted him. He beat on them feebly with his staff until they took it away from him. "Arrest the tree!" he insisted. "Obstructing sunlight! That's the charge! — Margaret Weis

You don't get to a place by constantly moving, even if your journey is only one of sitting still and waiting. Every once in a while you have to stop your tracks and admire the view, a small cloud an a tree outside your window — Rachel Joyce

I wrote a poem once - a simple thing, but instinct with longing - while sitting under a tree and listening to the cooing of a pigeon. But that was in the afternoon. My only longing now was for a gun. Three — Jerome K. Jerome

Singing at the Edge of Need by Susan Laughter Meyers (fragment)
Three things I turned my back to: light,
the past, the trunk of an old tree.
One by one each unfastened itself.
To sit is to present when the roll is called.
I knew that. I wore my hat of straw, fringed
like fingers sifting a breeze. My hat
collecting a thousand thoughts ...
... I had no map
and few lessons yet to guide me.
I was a study of questions. O Grandmother,
I was small, sitting in the midst of wildness,
a child thrilling at the boss of thunder.
A rustle of leaves, moss tipping at me-
I was small, I was hunger, I was thirst-
wings flitting in a brush pile. O Grandmother,
I was small, kneeling in the midst of wonder,
quaking and singing at the edge of need. — Susan Laughter Meyers

, and sometimes there's just no point in arguing with him. "Yeah, okay 'me, Jeff, and Evan, sitting in a tree ... '"
Chris claps his hands triumphantly. "That's right, baby!" Than a more serious expression comes across his face. "But, in a tree? Really? I mean, im a not an expert on the gay sex thing, but I think the first time at least you should be on the ground ... " And then the evening continues on as expected. — Kate Sherwood

The picnic table in the photo was an old door set up on sawhorses, and the seats were old tree stumps, or maybe thick pieces of firewood, topped with square cushions. Six men were sitting there, not looking at the camera, but at the beautiful woman with long, dark hair, almost to her waist, standing at the head of the table. She was smiling, her arms outstretched, as if welcoming everyone to her world. The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.
Even it looked a little in love with her. — Sarah Addison Allen

Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are. Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like being so blind that you don't see a huge black raven when it lands in the tree that you're sitting under. We can get so caught up in our own personal pain or worries that we don't notice that the wind has come up or that somebody has put flowers on the diningroom table or that when we walked out in the morning, the flags weren't up, and that when we came back, they were flying. — Pema Chodron

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. - Warren Buffett — Lora M. Cecere

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

Ede had been pregnant not quite the full term: eight months, two weeks, four days. She had lapsed into an extended silence - partly because she was still in mourning - still enraged and afraid of speech. And partly, too, because the child itself had taken up dreaming in her belly - dreaming and, Ede was certain, singing. Not singing songs a person knew, of course. Nothing Ede could recognize. But songs for certain. Music - with a tune to it. Evocative. A song about self. A song about place. As if a bird had sung it, sitting in a tree at the edge of a field. Or high in the air above a field. A hovering song. Of recognition. — Timothy Findley

By the brook she came suddenly upon Rosemary West, who was sitting on the old pine tree. She was on her way home from Ingleside, where she had been giving the girls their music lesson. She had been lingering in Rainbow Valley quite a little time, looking across its white beauty and roaming some by-ways of dream. Judging from the expression of her face, her thoughts were pleasant ones. Perhaps the faint, occasional tinkle from the bells on the Tree Lovers brought the little lurking smile to her lips. Or perhaps it was occasioned by the consciousness that John Meredith seldom failed to spend Monday evening in the gray house on the white wind-swept hill. — L.M. Montgomery

she was afraid, as much of the great pillared hall and the roof of stone as of the company of many eyes that watched her. And when Thingol bade her speak, she said: 'Lord, I was sitting in a tree'; but then she faltered in awe of the King, and could say no more. At that the King smiled, and said: 'Others have done this also, but have felt no need to tell me of it. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When you feel overwhelmed, you're trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things: to be and to do. Don't think too much about to do - to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness - on the basis of being. So first you have to focus on the practice of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being attentive. Being generous. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It's like if the other person is sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head. — Li Bai

She heard Rowan awake with a start before he reconciled himself to his surroundings. His back scraped across the trunk of the tree as he slid sideways
trying to see around the branch she was sitting on to get a look at her.
"Are you awake?" he asked, his voice still rough from sleep.
"Yeah."
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No." She heard him mumble something to himself and decided to cut him off before he could scold her again. "My butt did, though. Slept like a log all night."
"Well, obviously, your butt has more sense than you do."
"You're a funny man, Rowan whatever your last name is."
"Fall."
"I'd rather not."
She managed to get a tiny chuckle out of him, which she considered a huge achievement. Rowan stood up on his branch, bringing his head level with Lily's, and started to untie her. His lips were still pursed in a near smile.
"My name is Rowan Fall. — Josephine Angelini

It was toward the middle part of their relationship, though neither she nor Vohannes knew it then. She had found him sitting beneath a tree, watching the rowing team practicing in the Khamarda River, next to the academy. The girls' team had just set their shell in the water and was climbing in. When Shara joined him and sat in his lap, as she often did, she felt a soft lump pressing into her lower back. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Johnny and Marissa, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes an abrupt, tragic miscarriage. Then comes blame, then comes despair. Two hearts damaged beyond repair... Johnny leaves Marissa, and takes the tree. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. — Kris Wilson

You think, because you are sitting in a tree and it is raining and you have not eaten and you have not slept, that you are uncomfortable? You are following a clear path, and that is comfortable! — Sigal Samuel

But, Aunt... I don't want to go to the grave site set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don't want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now. — Kyung-Sook Shin

In ancient Greece, some people did that for a living. They would just sit on a tree branch or a stone bench and ponder, sometimes aloud. Some got answers and some got headaches. And now, in this new age of jet planes and pistachio ice-cream, we pondered over the same questions without getting the answers and maybe in five thousand years, some other kids will be sitting on roofs pondering the same all over again. Not far from the Shepherd's star, there was a discreet star, one who didn't shine too brightly. I had it named "Goddessa". It was mine. — Patric Juillet