Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Happiness
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
Serene I fold my hands and wait.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Resilience, Patience
A man may fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Blame, Success & Failure, Failure
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
Topics: Personality
How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Age, Aging
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: Promises, Wealth, Sacrifice
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: Friendship, Forgiveness, Opportunities, Opportunity
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Men
The secret of happiness is something to do.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Action, Joy, Happiness
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Reality
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
One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
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
Topics: Earth
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: Religion, Heaven
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: “To rise above the little things.”
—John Burroughs
Topics: Accomplishment
Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all—that has been my religion.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Religion
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Attitude
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: Fun, Pleasure
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: Value of Time, Time Management, Carpe-diem
Those lives are, indeed, narrow and confined which are not blessed with several children.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Children
The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Wonder
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
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
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, Seasons
One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Past
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, Tourism
Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.
—John Burroughs
Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
—John Burroughs
Topics: Life and Living
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
Topics: Wilderness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Muir American Naturalist
- Rachel Carson American Biologist
- Carl Sagan American Astronomer
- Aldo Leopold American Conservationist
- Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Carl Reiner American Comedian
- David Brower American Environmentalist
- Annie Dillard American Writer
- Barry Lopez American Essayist, Fiction Writer
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