John Burroughs Quotes

177 Sourced Quotes

One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds.

John Burroughs
Nature does not care whether the hunter slay the beast or the beast the hunter; she will make good compost of them both, and her ends are prospered whichever succeed.

John Burroughs
Science is probably unfavorable to the growth of literature because it does not throw man back upon himself and concentrate him as the old belief did; it takes him away from himself, away from human relations and emotions, and leads him on and on.

John Burroughs
The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.

John Burroughs
All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

John Burroughs
The charm of the songs of birds, like that of a nation's popular airs and hymns, is so little a question of intrinsic musical excellence and so largely a matter of association and suggestion, or of subjective coloring and reminiscence, that it is perhaps entirely natural for every people to think their own feathered songsters the best.

John Burroughs
O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best....

John Burroughs
A Notebook containing a few smooth pebbles which the waves of Thought leave, from time to time, upon my Shores.

John Burroughs
A mind that has a lively fancy and a sense of mystery will interpret phenomena quite differently from a mind in which these things are absent.

John Burroughs
Success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.

John Burroughs
Man can have but one interest in nature, namely, to see himself reflected or interpreted there, and we quickly neglect both poet and philosopher who fail to satisfy, in some measure, this feeling.

John Burroughs
The river idealizes the landscape. It multiplies and heightens the beauty of the day and season. A fair day it makes more fair, and a wild, tempestuous day it makes more wild. The face of winter makes it doubly rigid and corpse-like, and to the face of spring it adds new youth and sparkle.

John Burroughs
Nature exists to the mind not as an absolute realization, but as a condition, as something constantly becoming... It is suggestive and prospective; a body in motion, and not an object at rest.

John Burroughs
Its [the Earth's] age is in the rocks; in the great stone book of the geologic strata its history is written.

John Burroughs
How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.

John Burroughs
The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.

John Burroughs
Nature does not guard against waste or delay. All time and all matter are hers, and her losses and gains are all one.

John Burroughs
The grazing or ruminating cattle add a picturesque feature, but the gray granite boulders have been lying there chewing their stony cuds vastly longer. How meditative and contented they look, dreaming the centuries away!

John Burroughs
Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover - to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and, with no mercenary ends, accepts all.

John Burroughs
I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of my family tree.

John Burroughs
It is not in the act of seeing things or apprehending facts that we differ so much from one another, as in the act of interpreting what we see or apprehend.

John Burroughs
I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.

John Burroughs
If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.

John Burroughs
Science displeases literature when it dehumanizes nature and shows us irrefragable laws when we had looked for humanistic divinities.

John Burroughs
I am not going to advocate... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.

John Burroughs
Dogmatism about nature, or about anything else, very often turns out to be an ungrateful cur that bites the hand that reared it.

John Burroughs
There are no rational checks in Nature - all is left to chance; and the scheme works because Nature has all power and all time. There is no other, no rival. The All can go its own way; to play the game, to win and lose - the stakes are Nature's in any event.

John Burroughs
Literature interprets life and nature in terms of our sentiments and emotions; science interprets them in terms of our understanding.

John Burroughs
There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? Something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all people and what a wretched world it would be.

John Burroughs
In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.

John Burroughs