John Muir Quotes

291 Sourced Quotes

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.

John Muir
For all the way up the long red slate slopes, that in the distance seemed barren, you find little garden beds and tufts of dwarf phlox, ivesia, and blue arctic daisies that go straight to your heart, blessed fellow mountaineers kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles.

John Muir
If you are not very strong, try to climb Electric Peak when a big bossy, well-charged thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe the ozone set free, and get yourself kindly shaken and shocked. You are sure to be lost in wonder and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.

John Muir
A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.

John Muir
In the solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at an end.

John Muir
Not a peak, ridge, dome, canyon, lake basin, garden, forest, or stream but in some way explains the past existence and modes of action of flowing, grinding, sculpturing, soil making, scenery making ice.

John Muir
Even the storms are friendly and seem to regard you as a brother, their beauty and tremendous fateful earnestness charming alike.

John Muir
Bears are peaceable people and mind their own business, instead of going about like the devil seeking whom they may devour.

John Muir
Galen Clark was the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.

John Muir
On days like this, true sun-days, some of the bergs show a purplish tinge, though most are white from the disintegrating of their weathered surfaces. Now and then a new-born one is met that is pure blue crystal throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently exposed to the air by turning over.

John Muir
I was a few miles south of Louisville when I planned my journey. I spread out my map under a tree and made up my mind to go through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part of South America; but it will be only a hasty walk. I am thankful, however, for so much.

John Muir
The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed.

John Muir
A balmy day. Sunshine and lark song in glorious measure. A petition is being circulated in favor of preservation of larks from the ruthless slaughter of gunners. Larks are as characteristic of California weather as sunbeams. As well shoot the sun out of the sky.

John Muir
Every leaf and flower seems to have its winged representative in the swarms of happy flower-like insects that enliven the air above them.

John Muir
Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were only made for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.

John Muir
It is a fine thing to see people in hot earnest about anything.

John Muir
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many bairns - birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining jackets, and bears with shaggy furs.

John Muir
Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming, a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy.

John Muir
Here I could stay tethered forever with just bread and water, nor would I be lonely; loved friends and neighbors, as love for everything increased, would seem all the nearer however many the miles and mountains between us.

John Muir
The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds, and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.

John Muir
Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.

John Muir
Consumption of one another... is a kind of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear.

John Muir
The mighty trees getting their food are seen to be wide awake, every needle thrilling in the welcome nourishing storms, chanting and bowing low in glorious harmony, while every raindrop and snowflake is seen as a beneficent messenger from the sky.

John Muir
Both ocean and sky are already about as rosy as possible; the one with stars, the other with dulse, and foam, and wild light.

John Muir
Every purely natural object is a conductor of divinity, and we have but to expose ourselves in a clean condition to any of these conductors, to be fed and nourished by them. Only in this way can we procure our daily spirit bread.

John Muir
I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

John Muir
Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees as they stand in groups at rest.

John Muir
I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

John Muir
But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink.

John Muir
How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!

John Muir