Wilderness Essays Quotes

“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“…their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“...therefore all childish fear must be put away.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“But it is in the darkest nights, when storms are blowing and the agitated waves are phosphorescent, that the most impressive displays are made.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Though it is 2500 feet high, the glacier flowed over its ground as a river flows over a boulder; and since it emerged from the icy sea as from a sepulcher it has been sorely beaten with storms; but from all those deadly, crushing, bitter experiences comes this delicate life and beauty, to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“We were glad, however, to get within reach of information…”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, "What are rattlesnakes good for?" As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways....Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“For many in towns it is a consuming, lifelong struggle; for others, the danger of coming to want is so great, the deadly habit of endless hoarding for the future is formed, which smothers all real life, and is continued long after every reasonable need has been over-supplied.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“Wherever there were glaciers, the world was in a constant state of creation.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“We turned and sailed away, joining the outgoing bergs, while "gloria in excels is" still seemed to be sounding over all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had gain would enrich our lives forever.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Forest was planted above forest and destroyed, as if Nature were ever repenting, undoing the work she had so industriously done, and burying it.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“It is only race living on race, to be sure, but Christians singing Divine Love need not be driven to such straits while wheat and apples grow and the shops are full of dead cattle. Song birds for food! Compared with this, making kindlings of pianos and violins would be pious economy.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“the fishes and floating plants of ocean, sink and rise in beautiful rhythm with its waves; and, in like manner, the birds and plants of the plain sink and rise with these waves of land,”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Wander where you may, wildness ever fresh and ever beautiful meets you in endless variety:”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“As we sat by the camp-fire the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the stars; and their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Fancy a nicely proportioned monument, eight or ten feet high, hewn from one stone, standing in a pleasure ground; magnify it to a height of fifteen hundred feet, retaining its simplicity of form and fineness, and cover its surface with crystals; then you may gain an idea of the sublimity and beauty of this ice-burnished dome, one of many adorning this wonderful park.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded, earthquake-shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier sculptured world.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the vast maplike views, comprehending hundreds of miles of the Cascade Range, with their black interminable forests and white volcanic cones in glorious array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound region also, and the great plains of eastern Washington, hazy and vague in the distance.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“Accordingly, when during the long, dreary watches of the night we roused from a state of half-consciousness, we called each other by name in a frightened, startled way, each fearing the other might be benumbed or dead. The ordinary sensations of cold give but a faint conception of that which comes on after hard climbing with want of food and sleep in such exposure as this. Life is then seen to be a fire, that now smoulders, now brightens, and may be easily quenched. The weary hours wore away like dim half-forgotten years, so long and eventful they seemed, though we did nothing but suffer.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“In about two hours after beginning the descent we found ourselves among the sugar-pine groves at the lower end of the valley; and never did pines seem more noble and religious in gesture and tone.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“In so wild and so beautiful a region your first day will be spent, every sight and sound novel and inspiring, and leading you far from yourself.”
― John Muir, The Wilderness Essays

“He (the Douglas squirrel) is the most influential of the Sierra animals, quick mountain vigor and valor condensed, purely wild, and as free from disease as a sunbeam.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“Thence a charming, wavering course is pursued still northward through the grandest scenery to Tahkou, Juneau, Chilcat, Glacier Bay, and Sitka, affording fine glimpses of the innumerable evergreen islands, the icy mountain-ranges of the coast, the forests, glaciers, etc. The round trip of two thousand miles is made in about twelve days, and costs about a hundred dollars:”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays

“No other excursion that I know of can be made into any of the wild portions of America where so much fine and grand and novel scenery is brought to view at so cheap and easy a price. Anybody may make this trip and be blest by it–old or young, sick or well, soft, succulent people whose limbs have never ripened, as well as sinewy mountaineers; for the climate is kindly, and one has only to breathe the exhilarating air and gaze and listen while being carried smoothly onward over the glassy waters.”
― John Muir, Wilderness Essays