While bringing about reforms and improving institutions, we have to be cautious that while shaking the tree to remove the bad fruit, we do not bring down the tree itself.

To stab the root of a young tree, to hang crushing burdens upon it, to rend off its early branches — that is not the treatment likely to result in growth such as nature purposed. There will come of it a vicious formation, and the principle applies also to the youth of men.

If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree

The first of men did no more than take the fruit of the tree, and that, we are told, was sin. Modern humanity "tortures the tree in order the sooner to obtain its fruit."

Think neither fear nor courage saves us.
Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism.
Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi Nachman

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit; you know this is as well as anyone.

No matter if you cut off their branches, or they are struck by lightning, or if they rot due to lack of care, they will accept it and forgive. That’s the way trees are. Animals can move around, but a tree has to stay alive where it stands. Feeling sorry for trees or wanting to take care of them is something that only humans do.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree.
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree.

When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

I like your smile but I ain't your type, Don't shake the tree when the fruit ain't ripe