John Burroughs - Man Quotes

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The first step which a man or a people takes toward a culture is a love of the artificial, as such, while the last and crowning step is a love of the natural and the simple.

John Burroughs
The cell is an intelligent being; through the chemicophysical forces it builds up a man and fits him with a brain and all his wonderful organs and powers. It builds the flower, the seed, the leaf, the stalk, the root, and through the mystery of inheritance keeps up the succession of its kind.

John Burroughs
Man is at the top, in his own estimation, and thinks the sun and the moon are for him; but he is no more an end than a frog is; and is not so much atop as the birds are. He appeared in the plan, and he will disappear in the plan, and Nature values him only as manure - squanders him as recklessly as autumn leaves.

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
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
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 mysteries of religion are of a different order from those of science; they are parts of an arbitrary system of man's own creation; they contradict our reason and our experience, while the mysteries of science are revealed by our reason, and transcend our experience.

John Burroughs
There is no creature with which man has surrounded himself that seems so much like a product of civilization, so much like the result of development on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee.

John Burroughs
One man's science must be another man's science; all science is a whole - a pushing farther and farther of the lines of knowledge into nature.

John Burroughs
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.

John Burroughs
Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightnings smite him, as if he were only a dog.

John Burroughs
Man's craving for the supernatural is as natural as our discounting of the present moment.... The natural becomes trite and commonplace to us and we take refuge in an imaginary world above and beyond it.

John Burroughs
A fact that has passed through the mind of man, like lime or iron that has passed through his blood, has some quality or property superadded or brought out that it did not possess before.

John Burroughs
Man lives in his emotions, his hopes and fears, his loves and sympathies, his predilections and his affinities, more than in his reason.

John Burroughs
Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.

John Burroughs
I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia's Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul's aspiration toward the Infinite.

John Burroughs
Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

John Burroughs
The fuel in the earth will be exhausted in a thousand or more years, and its mineral wealth, but man will find substitutes for these in the winds, the waves, the sun's heat, and so forth.

John Burroughs
Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

John Burroughs
Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.

John Burroughs
A man's life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate. And just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.

John Burroughs