John Muir quotes - page 5

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men. (John Muir)
Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.
John Muir
Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing.
John Muir
One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.
John Muir
Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.
John Muir
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
John Muir
The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts.
John Muir
The sun shines not on us but in us.
John Muir
I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.
John Muir
Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.
John Muir
Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm. (John Muir)
Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.
John Muir
How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!
John Muir
These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
John Muir
Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
John Muir
What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
John Muir
Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.
John Muir
Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.
John Muir
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. ... The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.
John Muir
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.
John Muir
That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits. (John Muir)
[Concerning an aurora, "vivid crimson ... indescribably rich and deep":] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.
John Muir
Pollution, defilement, squalor are words that never would have been created had man lived conformably to Nature. Birds, insects, bears die as cleanly and are disposed of as beautifully as flies. The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living.... How beautiful is all Death!
John Muir
[Concerning the founding of the Sierra Club] Hoping that we will be able to do something for wildness and make the mountains glad.
John Muir
The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar ... the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. ... No particle is ever wasted or worn out but eternally flowing from use to use.
John Muir