Selected Quotes By 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, Nature
"How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!"
John Muir, Society
"Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing."
John Muir, Nature, Work
"I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness."
John Muir, Goals, Nature
"Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm."
John Muir, Life
"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, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom, Time
"Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress..."
John Muir, Goals
"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, Nature
"We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men."
John Muir, Nature
"This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!"
John Muir, Nature, Death
"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, Nature
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature, Life
"I don't like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre', 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."
John Muir, Nature
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
John Muir, Nature
"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!"
John Muir, Nature
"Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature, Love
"Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue."
John Muir, Nature
"Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."
John Muir, Society
"On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... 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, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights."
John Muir, Nature, Life, Death, Ideas
"The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love."
John Muir, Nature, Music, Love
"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, Nature
"Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality."
John Muir, Nature, Life, Freedom
"Going to the mountains is going home."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature
"Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it."
John Muir, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world."
John Muir, Nature
"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
John Muir, Power
"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature
"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."
John Muir, Life
"The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts."
John Muir, Life
"The sun shines not on us but in us."
John Muir, Nature
"In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature, Life
"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, Nature
"And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul."
John Muir, Nature
"The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."
John Muir, Nature
"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."
John Muir, Nature
"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, Nature
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
John Muir, Nature
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
John Muir, Nature
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."