Great Trees QUOTES

1 " When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed. "

― Maya Angelou

2 " I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes.
Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. "

― Henri-Frédéric Amiel , Amiel's Journal, Vol 1: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel

3 " There, Clover found the " gardens and great trees and old cottages...so beautiful" that seeing them exhausted her. It was as if, she joked with her husband, " this English world is a huge stage-play got up only to amuse Americans. It is obviously unreal, eccentric, and taken out of novels. "

4 " With great abilities come great responsibilities; great power comes with great assignments.

With great age comes great reasoning; great actions come great experience.

With great battles come great victories; great trees come with great tap roots.

However, if a little faith can move great mountains, what then will a great faith do? Mysterious things... I guess "

― Israelmore Ayivor