John Muir famous quotes

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".
-- John Muir

#Nature #Heart #Garden

The mountains are calling and I must go.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Mountain #Calling

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
-- John Muir

#Beauty #Nature #Stars

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity...
-- John Muir

#Travel #Home #Tired

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
-- John Muir

#Motivational #Wisdom #Nature

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Adventure #Garden

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news
-- John Muir

#Nature #Adventure #Men

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
-- John Muir

#Beautiful #Song #Creating

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

#Nature #Flower #Adventure

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.
-- John Muir

#Needs #Bread #Imperfect

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

#Nature #Sea #Tree

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?
-- John Muir

#Humility #Men #World

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Adventure #Dark

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir

#Peace #Nature #Sunshine

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
-- John Muir

#Dirt #Path

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.
-- John Muir

#Song #Flower #Heart

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world.
-- John Muir

#Lying #World #Wildness

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
-- John Muir

#Inspirational #Peace #Nature

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Flower #Garden

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Morning #Sleep

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
-- John Muir

#Inspirational #Nature #Giving

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
-- John Muir

#Nature #I Hate You #Heart

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest!
-- John Muir

#Adventure #Mountain #Calm

Most people are on the world, not in it.
-- John Muir

#Adventure #People #World

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

#Song #Tree #Storm

I never saw a discontented tree.
-- John Muir

#Adventure #Tree #Saws

One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
-- John Muir

#Garden #Shining #Rising

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.
-- John Muir

#Men #Space #Track

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.
-- John Muir

#Religious #Blessed #Blue

Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."
-- John Muir

#Beautiful #Land #Hiking

I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.
-- John Muir

#Strong #Home #Sun

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
-- John Muir

#Inspirational Life #Sunshine #Tree

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.
-- John Muir

#Spring #Enthusiasm #Joyful

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.
-- John Muir

#Cells #Music And Life #Fiber

God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.
-- John Muir

#Beautiful #Long #Shining

Wilderness is a necessity... there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls...
-- John Muir

#Soul #Wilderness #Humans

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 movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!
-- John Muir

#Stars #Perfect #Water

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.
-- John Muir

#Mountain #Taste #Walks

Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.
-- John Muir

#Life #Doors #Two

Look up and down and round about you.!
-- John Muir

#Looks #Down And #Look Up

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,-a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.‎
-- John Muir

#Nature #Glasses #Rocks

Rivers flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.
-- John Muir

#Memorable #Past #Cells

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world-the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.
-- John Muir

#Lying #Civilization #World

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.
-- John Muir

#Adventure #Long #Ugly

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much.
-- John Muir

#Humility #Journey #Men

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

#Real #Soul #Measurement

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.
-- John Muir

#Strong #Adventure #Men

Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.
-- John Muir

#Life #Air #Tongue

There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.
-- John Muir

#Fragments #Units #Relative

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.
-- John Muir

#Short Life #Fate #Blessing

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Animal #Pet

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Adventure #Garden

The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.
-- John Muir

#Battle #Goes On #Conservation

The sun shines not on us but in us.
-- John Muir

#Inspirational #Strength #Emotional

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress...
-- John Muir

#Creative #Progress #Blind

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

#Spiritual #Soul #Germs

Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
-- John Muir

#Mountain #Poet #Fountain

By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life....
-- John Muir

#Fire #Ice #Water

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.
-- John Muir

#Book #Adventure #One Day

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts . . .
-- John Muir

#Heart #Tree #Mountain

Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.
-- John Muir

#Wind #Scent #May

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

#Mountain #Mets #Galen

I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Wind #Water

I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention...
-- John Muir

#Book #Mind #Attention

The power of imagination makes us infinite.
-- John Muir

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
-- John Muir

#Spiritual #Civilization #Environment

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.
-- John Muir

#Country #Travel #Alaska

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
-- John Muir

#Learning #Air #Water

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
-- John Muir

#Happiness #Nature #Travel

So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees...
-- John Muir

#Fall #Angel #Sunshine

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.
-- John Muir

#Wind #Long #Bird

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
-- John Muir

#Life #Strength #Beauty

Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing
-- John Muir

#Adventure #World #Prize

In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts.
-- John Muir

#Heart #Fire #Dry

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
-- John Muir

#Life #Beautiful #Death

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.
-- John Muir

#Men #Tree #Together

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
-- John Muir

#Two #Tree #Curiosity

I will follow my instincts, and be myself for good or ill.
-- John Muir

#Free Spirit #Instinct #Ill

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling... every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.
-- John Muir

#Flower #Mirrors #Heaven

I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.
-- John Muir

#Forever

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. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.
-- John Muir

#Life #Song #Cutting

The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.
-- John Muir

#Men #Rivers #Mountain

I might have become a millionaire, but I chose to become a tramp.
-- John Muir

#Might #Tramps #Millionaire

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.
-- John Muir

#People #Looks #Care

Going to the mountains is going home.
-- John Muir

#Home #Adventure #Mountain

Most people are on the world, not in it-- having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them-- undiffused seporate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but seporate.
-- John Muir

#Sympathy #People #Touching

Anyhow we never know where we must go, nor what guides we are to get---people,storms, guardian angels, or sheep....
-- John Muir

#Angel #Sheep #People

Wander a whole summer if you can.  Time will not be taken from the sum of life.  Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.
-- John Muir

#Summer #Taken #Wander

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Heart #Rocks

I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.
-- John Muir

#Song #Winter #Storm

Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.
-- John Muir

#Men #Mountain #He Man

All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.
-- John Muir

#Beautiful #Sea #Land

How lavish is Nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.
-- John Muir

#Beautiful #Nature #Creating

One can make a day of any size
-- John Muir

#Seize The Day #Size

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
-- John Muir

#Heart #People #Tree

Yosemite Park... None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.
-- John Muir

#Fire #Tree #Forever

I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.
-- John Muir

#Thinking #Church #Mountain

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.
-- John Muir

#Nature #Men #Care

Look! Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God!
-- John Muir

#Vision #Looks #Grandeur

Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.
-- John Muir

#Adventure #Home #Trying