John Burroughs (1837–1921) was an American essayist and naturalist who lived and wrote after the manner of Henry David Thoreau, studying and celebrating nature. He was also active in the U.S. conservation movement.
Born Roxbury, New York, Burroughs became a teacher and clerk in the Treasury Department, Washington, D.C. In 1874, he settled down in Esopus, near West Park, New York. He built a secluded cabin for his studies and entertained such friends as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Walt Whitman.
Burroughs’s works mainly deal with country life and include Wake-Robin (1871,) Winter Sunshine (1875,) Birds and Poets (1877,) Locusts and Wild Honey (1879,) Signs and Seasons (1886,) and Ways of Nature (1905.) He also wrote the volume of poems Bird and Bough (1906.) His Winter Sunshine (1875) and Fresh Fields (1884) are sketches of travel in England and France.
The John Burroughs Association, established in his memory in 1921, promotes writing in natural science. Edward J. Renehan Jr. wrote the biography John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (1992.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Burroughs
The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.
—John Burroughs
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Belief
A man may fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Failure, Success & Failure
Those lives are, indeed, narrow and confined which are not blessed with several children.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Children
I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings
—John Burroughs
New time always! Old time we cannot keep. Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it, until it has passed over us and taken with it a part of ourselves.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Time
In the fields and woods more than anything else all things come to those who wait, because all things are on the move, and are sure sooner or later to come your way. To absorb a thing is better than to learn it, and we absorb what we enjoy. We learn things at school; we absorb them in the fields and woods. When we look upon Nature with fondness and appreciation, she meets us halfway and takes a deeper hold on us than when studiously conned. Hence I say the way of knowledge of Nature is the way of love and enjoyment, and is more surely found in the open air than in the school room or the laboratory.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Nature
One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand-to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Heaven, Religion
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Reality
Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.
—John Burroughs
One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Philosophy
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life… . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds—how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives—and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
—John Burroughs
Topics: Birds
Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Life and Living
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter has given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and blood.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Summer
I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Carpe-diem, Time Management, Value of Time
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’ You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Forgiveness, Opportunity, Friendship, Opportunities
The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Miracles
For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice—no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Wealth, Promises, Sacrifice
Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
—John Burroughs
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: “To rise above the little things.”
—John Burroughs
Topics: Accomplishment
Happiness comes most to persons who seek it least, and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought, it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Happiness
How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Age, Aging
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Travel
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
—John Burroughs
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Attitude
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
Topics: Purpose
The secret of happiness is something to do.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Happiness, Action
Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Happiness
Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Culture
Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all—that has been my religion.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Religion
One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Past
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Men
To find new things, take the path you took yesterday.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Life, One liners
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
Topics: Pleasure
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Simplicity
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Nature
Serene I fold my hands and wait.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Patience, Resilience
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
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John Muir American Naturalist
Carl Sagan American Astronomer
Rachel Carson American Biologist
Aldo Leopold American Conservationist
Carl Reiner American Comedian
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
Annie Dillard American Writer
Barry Lopez American Essayist, Fiction Writer
David Brower American Environmentalist