John Burroughs famous quotes

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspirational #Positive #Wisdom

We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.
-- John Burroughs

#Wind #Storm #Demon

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

#Yield #Facts #Significant

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspirational #Positive #Running

In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.
-- John Burroughs

#Stars #Winter #Moon

Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.
-- John Burroughs

#Mind #Resolution

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspirational #Funny #Character

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

#Inspirational #Life #Birthday

I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.
-- John Burroughs

#Stars #Real #Men

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.
-- John Burroughs

#Science #Joy #Curiosity

The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.
-- John Burroughs

#Nature #Mind #World

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

#Flower #Book #Honey

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
-- John Burroughs

#Beauty #Beautiful #Light

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

#Nature #Educational #Garden

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.
-- John Burroughs

#Winter #Fire #Air

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

#Nature #Inspiration #Artist

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

#Book #Names #Three

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

#Inspirational #Gratitude #Morning

I am in love with this world . . . 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

#Nature #Rain #Wind

What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel...
-- John Burroughs

#Winter #Artist #Canvas

Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.
-- John Burroughs

#Communication #Men #Feet

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

#Music #Nature #Health

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #War #Struggle

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
-- John Burroughs

#Men #Nails #Literature

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

#Love #Life #Motivational

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.
-- John Burroughs

#Work #Hands #Secret

When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.
-- John Burroughs

#Blue #Color #Sky

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspirational #Life #Philosophical

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
-- John Burroughs

#Summer #Winter #World

Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night.
-- John Burroughs

#Heart #Night #Self

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

#Heart #Wine #Winter

The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.
-- John Burroughs

#Cheer #Color #Bird

The place to observe nature is where you are.
-- John Burroughs

#Nature #Where You Are

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
-- John Burroughs

#Believe #Optimism #Mind

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
-- John Burroughs

#Attitude #Positive Thinking #Godly

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.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #Spiritual #Thinking

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

#Travel #Men #Stones

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

#Happiness #Thinking #States

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.
-- John Burroughs

#Time #Fate #Hands

The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.
-- John Burroughs

#Rivers #Lakes #Sea

The secret of happiness is something to do.
-- John Burroughs

#Happiness #Inner Peace #Secret

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspirational #Humor #Opportunity

That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.
-- John Burroughs

#Independence #Independence Day #Blank

If you think you can do it, you can.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #Sports #Thinking

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
-- John Burroughs

#Years #Civilization #Religion

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #Stars #Opportunity

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
-- John Burroughs

#Inspiration #Firefighter #Wanted

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

#Lying #Character #Fate

The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.
-- John Burroughs

#God #Religion #Monsters

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.
-- John Burroughs

#Goodbye #Running #Sweet

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate.
-- John Burroughs

#Flower #Heart #Men

The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.
-- John Burroughs

#Incredibles #Christianity #Method

Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.
-- John Burroughs

#Water #Earth #Holy

Science is a capital or fund perpetually reinvested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon, to set himself up in business with. What an enormous sum Darwin availed himself of and reinvested! Not so in literature; to every poet, to every artist, it is still the first day of creation, so far as the essentials of his task are concerned. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new-grown.
-- John Burroughs

#Art #Science #Men

We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
-- John Burroughs

#Mountain #Walks

I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round.
-- John Burroughs

#Summer #Home #Autumn

To see Earth fully we already need to love it
-- John Burroughs

#Needs #Earth

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #Strong #War

The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology.
-- John Burroughs

#Time #Atmosphere #Age

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking
-- John Burroughs

#Thinking #Action #Power Of Thought

Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.
-- John Burroughs

#Life #Doe #Sacred