John Burroughs - Nature Quotes

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I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

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
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

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

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
Some birds represent the majesty of Nature, like the eagles ; others its ferocity, like the hawks ; others its cunning, like the crow; others its sweetness and melody, like the song-birds. The loon represents its wildness and solitariness.

John Burroughs
Nature works with such simple means! A little more or a little of this or that, and behold the difference!

John Burroughs
Originality is Nature expressed, imitation is Nature suppressed.

John Burroughs
She [Nature] works with reference to no measure of time, no limit of space, and with an abundance of material not expressed by exhaustless.

John Burroughs
The gold of nature does not look like gold at the first glance. It must be smelted and refined in the mind of the observer. And one must crush mountains of quartz and wash hills of sand to get it.

John Burroughs
The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.

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

John Burroughs
You find in Nature only what you bring to her. If you are joyful, she is joyful; if you are sad, she is sad. The religious soul find Nature very religious. To the scientist she means science, and to the poet she means picture and parable. She is all things to all men.

John Burroughs
Nature does not work by prefixes and suffixes, but by unfolding and ever unfolding, or developing out of latent innate powers and possibilities.

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
The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.

John Burroughs
Nature comes home to one most when he is at home; the stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.

John Burroughs
What is size? What is time, distance, etc., to Nature? Nothing. She knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end, no life, no death; that is, she works without reference to these things.

John Burroughs
Science strips Nature to her bare bones; literature and philosophy clothe the bones with something analogous to flesh and blood and warmth and color.

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
One must always cross-question nature if he would get at the truth, and he will not get at it then unless he frames his questions with great skill. Most persons are unreliable observers because they put only leading questions, or vague questions.

John Burroughs
Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.

John Burroughs
The rainbow is truly an apparition; you cannot approach it; you cannot grasp it, or find its end. I has no end, and no beginning. It is also born of the spray of cataracts, but sways not as the spray sways. It is one of the oldest and most striking phenomena in nature, and one of the most subtle and elusive.

John Burroughs
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature....

John Burroughs
To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes; to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures; to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration; to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables; to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.

John Burroughs
The truths of naturalism do not satisfy the moral and religious nature.

John Burroughs
Close scrutiny of an object in nature will nearly always yield some significant fact...

John Burroughs
I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.

John Burroughs