John Muir quotes - page 4

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark. (John Muir)
This 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. View quote
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. View quote
John Muir
No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in a way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains as to wilderness, as that which declares that the world was made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged. View quote
John Muir
Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another -- killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities. View quote
John Muir
Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. View quote
John Muir
Anyhow we never know where we must go, nor what guides we are to get - -people,storms, guardian angels, or sheep. View quote
John Muir
All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander. View quote
John Muir
Wander a whole summer if you can. Time will not be taken from the sum of life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. View quote
John Muir
I did find Calypso - but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. ... I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy. View quote
John Muir
I ran home [from Cloud's Rest to Yosemite Valley] in the moonlight, with long, firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. Down through the junipers - down through the firs; now in jet-shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rock; past the huge ghost of South Dome, rising weird through the firs - past glorious Nevada - past the groves of Illilouette - through the pines of the valley; frost-crystals flashing all the sky beneath, as star-crystals on all the sky above. All of this mountain-bread for one day! (John Muir)
I'm now done with this glorious continent [South America] ... . I've seen all I sought for and far, far, far more. ... wandered most joyfully ... through millions of acres of the ancient tree I was so anxious to find, Araucaria braziliensis. Just think of the glow of my joy in these noble aboriginal forests - the face of every tree marked with the inherited experiences of millions of years. ... Crossed the Andes... Then straight to snowline and found a glorious forest of Araucaria imbricata, the strangest of the strange genus. View quote
John Muir
With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake, feeling yourself contained in one of Nature's most sacred chambers, withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm, terrestrial, human love, delightfully substantial and familiar. View quote
John Muir
I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot. 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. View quote
John Muir
I don't think Mr. Harriman is very rich. He has not as much money as I have. I have all I want and Mr. Harriman has not. View quote
John Muir
Fain would I describe the glories of those months in the ice-world - the beautiful and terrible network of crevasses, the clustering pinnacles, the thousand streams ringing and gurgling in azure channels cut in the living body of the glacier, the glorious radiance of the sunbeams falling on crystal dale and hill, the rosy glow of the dawn and sunset, the march of the clouds on the mountains, and the mysterious splendor of the auroras when the nights grow long, etc., etc., etc. But this would require a volume, while here I have only space to add - Go to Alaska, go and see. View quote
John Muir
Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen. View quote
John Muir
Our crude civilization engenders a multitude of wants, and lawgivers are ever at their wits' end devising. The hall and the theater and the church have been invented, and compulsory education. Why not add compulsory recreation? Our forefathers forged chains of duty and habit, which bind us notwithstanding our boasted freedom, and we ourselves in desperation add link to link, groaning and making medicinal laws for relief. Yet few think of pure rest or of the healing power of Nature. View quote
John Muir
It is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. View quote
John Muir
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. View quote
John Muir
We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. (John Muir)
Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal. View quote
John Muir
This time it is real - all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death! View quote
John Muir
Nothing truly wild is unclean. View quote
John Muir
Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold. View quote
John Muir