John Muir Quotes

I ... am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.

Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.

Tug on anything in nature and you will find it connected to everything else.

The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.

Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen

I'd rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.

Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.

In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts.

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.

Our lives are rounded with a sleep.

Come to the woods, for here is rest.

Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.

Look up and down and round about you.!

No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them.

But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.

Going to the woods is going home.

One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.

But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.

Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work ... to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

I will follow my instincts, and be myself for good or ill.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

The power of imagination is infinite.

Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence ... to show that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for itself.

Who reports the works and ways of the clouds, those wondrous creations coming into being every day like freshly upheaved mountains?

Man has injured every animal he has touched.

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie ... imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.

They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable-soul -less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.

Man and other civilized animals are the only creatures that ever become dirty.

A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.

Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?

How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

Some people miss flesh as a drunkard misses his dram ...

What wonders lie in every mountain day!

Quench love, and what is left of a man's life but the folding of a few jointed bones and square inches of flesh? Who would call that life?

The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

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

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

learn to live like the wild animals,

Anyhow we never know where we must go, nor what guides we are to get
people,storms, guardian angels, or sheep ...

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

What is worthwhile in life? I think it is worth living and dreaming. If you don't you may be dead anyhow - inside.

The practical importance of the preservation of our forests is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams.

I made these Sierra trips, carrying only a sackful of bread with a little tea and sugar, and was thus independent and free ...

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Every good thing great and small needs defense

Rivers flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

Of all the paths you take in life,
make sure a few of them are dirt.

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.

All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light.

...therefore all childish fear must be put away.

Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

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!

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.

Longing for the mountains

Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.

The blessings of one mountain day, whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill.

Strange the faithless fuss made about taking a walk in the safest and pleasantest of all places, a wilderness.

Take me into the mountains

Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek.

Bread without butter or coffee without milk is an awful calamity, as if everything before being put in our mouth must first be held under a cow.

No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.

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

Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

I bade adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

The sun shines not on us but in us.

Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite.

How lavish is Nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress ...

One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.

Listen to them! How wholly infused with God is this one big word of love that we call the world!

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you'll find its attached to everything else.

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

I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.

Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.

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.

One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.

Every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.

God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

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

We were glad, however, to get within reach of information ...