Quotes & Sayings About Willow Trees

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins. — Elizabeth Goudge

By now, at the end of a sloping alley, we had reached the shores of a vast marsh. Some unknown quality in the sparkling water had stained its whole bed a bright yellow. Green leaves, of such a sour brightness as almost poisoned to behold, floated on the surface of the rush-girdled pools. Weeds like tempting veils of mossy velvet grew beneath in vivid contrast with the soil. Alders and willows hung over the margin. From where we stood a half-submerged path of rough stones, threaded by deep swift channels, crossed to the very centre.
("The Basilisk") — R. Murray Gilchrist

Their leafy whispers delighted her, and she promised her confidentiality by gently touching the trunks of both trees. They had held her secrets close to their hearts, she could do no less. — Jesikah Sundin

Beyond all other trees," she said with a curl of a smile on her elegant mouth, "the willow moves to the wind's desire. — Patrick Rothfuss

The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. — Haruki Murakami

It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy. — Rachel Joyce

How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists
coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like
sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill
Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open
ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven
and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the
drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of
twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping
leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper-
ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned
with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they
tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on
their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by
nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene
of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university
city devoted to logic and reason. — Penelope Fitzgerald

In Paul Friedrich's book Proto-Indo-European Trees he identifies the "semantic primitives" of the Indo-European tribe of languages through a group of words that have not changed much through twelve thousand years - and those are tree names: especially birch, willow, adler, elm, ash, apple and beech (bher, wyt, alysos, ulmo, os, abul, bhago). Seed syllables, bija, of the life of the west. — Gary Snyder

Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There ain't any cool willow trees- except you grow your own in a bottle. — Eugene O'Neill

Willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing — Frank O'Hara

The sun was barely above the trees and any moment it would disappear. There was a golden haze in the air and it was appreciably colder than even a few minutes before. A cloud of starlings wheeled above a distant stand of poplars, still bare, although in the next garden a willow trailed weeping branches like streamers of pale chiffon. The breeze was so slight it did not even stir them. — Anne Perry

It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air ... spreading DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds ... It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs. — Richard Dawkins

Willow trees dipped their bare branches into pond water like girls testing the temperature with their toes. — Elizabeth Berg

Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from - who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house.
When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats. — J. Ruth Gendler

These ears aren't to be trusted.
The keening in the night, didn't you hear?
Once I believed all the stories didn't have endings,
but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,
had yet to be imagined.
The months come around again,
and we are in the same place;
full moons, cherries in bloom,
the same deer, the same frogs,
the same helpless scratching at the dirt.
You leave poems I can't read
behind on the sheets,
I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.
you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;
I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise.
Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.
I've inhaled the spells of willow trees,
spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.
Sleep easy, from behind the closet door
I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

(from, The Fox-Wife's Invitation) — Jeannine Hall Gailey

Silent sobbing. No one sees.
Weeping like the willow trees.
Feel my heart about to pop.
Need to make the aching stop.
See moon's shimmer softly pass.
On the shards of broken glass. — Madeleine Kuderick

I like to go to places with my high-fashion things where there are a lot of cameras. So I can just go there and be like, 'Yep, yep, I'm looking so sick.' But in my regular life, I put on clothes that I can climb trees in. — Willow Smith

Trees that, like the poplar, lift upward all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us, when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lower drop their boughs. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

So Recklessly Exposed

December and January, gone.
Tulips coming up. It's time to watch
how trees stagger in the wind
and roses never rest.

Wisteria and Jasmine twist on themselves.
Violet kneels to Hyacinth, who bows.

Narcissus winks, wondering what will
the lightheaded Willow say
of such slow dancing by Cypress.

Painters come outdoors with brushes.
I love their hands.

The birds sing suddenly and all at once.
The soul says Ya Hu, quietly.

A dove calls, Where, ku?
Soul, you will find it.

Now the roses show their breasts.
No one hides when the Friend arrives.

The Rose speaks openly to the Nightingale.
Notice how the Green Lily has several tongues
but still keeps her secret.

Now the Nightingale sings this love
that is so recklessly exposed, like you. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Willow trees are kind, Dear God. They will not bear a body on their limbs. — Alice Dunbar Nelson

It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long. — Catherine Maria Fanshawe

But what Tyler longed for was to have The Feeling arrive; when every flicker of light that touched the dipping branches of a weeping willow, every breath of breeze that bent the grass towards the row of apple trees, every shower of yellow ginko leaves dropping to the ground with such direct and tender sweetness, would fill the minister with profound and irreducible knowledge that God was right there. — Elizabeth Strout

All at once the hard, cold earth seemed to explode. The brown surface of the world dissolved and in its place was an impossible, an inconceivable, an unbelievable profusion of color: green grass and purple and red flowers; sprays of lily; white baby's breath that covered the hills; nodding fields of bright yellow daffodils; rich purple moss. The trees burst forth with new leaves. The weeping willow tree was a mass of tiny pale green leaves, thousands of them, which whispered and sighed together as the wind moved through its branches. There were fat heads of lettuce in the fields, and cucumbers lying like jewels among them, and enormous red tomatoes surrounded by thick, knotted vines.

And for the first time in 1,728 days, the clouds broke apart and there was dazzling blue sky, and light beyond what anyone could remember.

The sun had come out at last. — Lauren Oliver

The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before - but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever. As they drew near to it, and saw the willow trees that bent over the water-edge and heard the sharp call of moorhens that scuttled off, the children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on. — Enid Blyton

The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don't know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?
Lama Surya Das — Lama Surya Das

I spent my childhood outdoors on my grandparents' farm. I learned to ride a motorbike when I was about six, a little PeeWee 50. I'd climb trees - there was a big weeping willow. — Miranda Kerr