Robert Henri Quotes

The spirits increase, vigor grows through a wound.

Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight.

I don't get tired. I get beat up. You keep chopping on a tree, you need to give the tree some rest so the chlorophyll will fill back up and the tree gets its energy back.

Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.

When your spirit is alive, when somebody has got a strong spirit, they could be on the verge of death physically, and they'll leak out more life.

Life, unlike the inanimate, will take the long way round to circumvent barrenness. A kind of desperate will resides even in a root.

Just because the road ahead is long, is no reason to slow down. Just because there is much work to be done, is no reason to get discouraged. It is a reason to get started, to grow, to find new ways, to reach within yourself and discover strength, commitment, and determination. The road ahead is long and difficult, but it’s filled with opportunity. Start what needs starting. Finish what needs finishing. Get on the road. Stay on the road. Don’t give up.

We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.

A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.

It's easy to become hopeless. So people must have hope: the human brain, the resilience of nature, the energy of young people and the sort of inspiration that you see from so many hundreds of people who tackle tasks that are impossible and never give up and succeed.

Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.

For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.

He also has energy who cannot be deprived of it.

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!

... there is a skeleton (or death) that flees terrified in the face of my will to live.

When you have life, you can weather any storm. You're breathing. You have life.

Only the fire of life can melt the chains of death.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying.

I was shown a fledgling learning to fly. It's first efforts were very feeble. But as it used its wings more and more, they became stronger until it found the freedom of flight and was able to soar to great heights and fly great distance without any effort. I heard the words: Faith comes with practice. Live by faith until it becomes rocklike unshakable, and find the true freedom of the spirit.

I am a dreamer but when I wake, you can't break my spirit, it's my dreams you take