Wilderness is a necessity … They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.
—John Muir
Topics: Friendship
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
—John Muir
Topics: Walking
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
—John Muir
Topics: Gardening
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.
—John Muir
Topics: Nature, Wilderness
Here is calm so deep, grasses cease waiting… wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not passed, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
—John Muir
Topics: Solitude, Wilderness, Beauty
One can make a day of any size, and regulate the rising and the setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
—John Muir
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe… The whole wilderness is unity and interrelationship is alive and familiar.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell… I asked the boulders I met, whence they came and whither they were going.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
The power of imagination makes us infinite.
—John Muir
The mountains are calling and I must go.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness, Security, Authority
Good luck and Good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers.
—John Muir
Topics: Water
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains.
—John Muir
Topics: Light
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown; for going out, I found, was really going in.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
—John Muir
I care to live only to entice people to look at nature’s loveliness. My only special self is nothing (I want to be) like a flake of glass through which light passes.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom on the mountains. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The wind will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
—John Muir
Topics: Autumn, Fresh, Nature, Wilderness
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.
—John Muir
To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
I have a low opinion of books; they are but piles of stones set up to show travelers where other minds have been, or at best smoke signals to call attention… One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cart load of books.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
I … am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness, Nature
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
—John Muir
Topics: Civilization
No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movement of water, or gardening—still all is Beauty!
—John Muir
Topics: Wilderness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Alexander Graham Bell Scottish-born American Inventor
- E. O. Wilson American Sociobiologist
- B. C. Forbes Scottish-born American Journalist
- Charles Darwin British Naturalist
- John Witherspoon American Clergyman
- Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
- Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
- Rachel Carson American Biologist
- Aldo Leopold American Conservationist
- Carl Sagan American Astronomer
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