John Muir > Quotes

“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 away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
― John Muir

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
― John Muir

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
― John Muir

“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
― John Muir

“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
― John Muir

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity...”
― John Muir

“Keep close to Nature's heart...and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
― John Muir

“The sun shines not on us but in us.”
― John Muir

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
― John Muir

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
― John Muir

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ”
― John Muir

“Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.”
― John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

“Going to the mountains is going home.”
― John Muir

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
― John Muir, Our National Parks

“I will follow my instincts, and be myself for good or ill.”
― John Muir

“In God's wildness lies the hope of the world.”
― John Muir

“Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.”
― John Muir

“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties”
― John Muir

“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
― John Muir

“Everybody needs beauty...places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.”
― John Muir

“Most people are on the world, not in it-- having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them-- undiffused seporate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but seporate. ”
― John Muir

“Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress...”
― John Muir

“As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".”
― John Muir

“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.”
― John Muir

“One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.”
― John Muir, Our National Parks

“How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!”
― John Muir

“When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”
― 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, Travels in Alaska

“Going to the woods is going home.”
― John Muir

“Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing”
― John Muir

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
― John Muir

“One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
― John Muir

“Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and give strength to body and soul alike.”
― John Muir

“The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.”
― John Muir

“Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.”
― 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, John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings

“Anyhow we never know where we must go, nor what guides we are to get---people,storms, guardian angels, or sheep....”
― John Muir

“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fool”
― John Muir

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
― John Muir

“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.”
― John Muir, The Mountains of California

“In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts.”
― John Muir

“Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”
― 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 necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
― John Muir

“Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.”
― John Muir

“Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness World of John Muir

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”
― John Muir

“One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes...”
― John Muir