Quotes by John Muir

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.

One can make a day of any size.

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

Every purely natural object is a conductor of divinity, and we have but to expose ourselves in a clean condition to any of these conductors, to be fed and nourished by them. Only in this way can we procure our daily spirit bread.

So also there are tides and floods in the affairs of men, which in some are slight and may be kept within bounds, but in others they overmaster everything.

This time it is real -- all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

Look! Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God!

Listen to them! How wholly infused with God is this one big word of love that we call the world!

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.

Wildness was ever sounding in our ears, and Nature saw to it that besides school lessons some of her own lessons should be learned, perhaps with a view to the time when we should be called to wander in wildness to our heart's content.

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.

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.

The body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable.

Quench love, and what is left of a man's life but the folding of a few jointed bones and square inches of flesh? Who would call that life?

When I was a child in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately, around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness.

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie ...imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.

No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.

Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.

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.

If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or slightly remodel the present ones, leaving all the rest of nature unchanged, we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed.

My meals were easily made, for they were all alike and simple, only a cupful of tea and bread.

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.

Men use care in purchasing a horse, and are neglectful in choosing friends.

We all flow from one fountain.

Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day. The multitude of mixed, novel impressions rapidly piled on one another make only a dreamy, bewildering, swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable.

It may not be easy, life isn't easy, but dreams keep you alive.

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

Strange the faithless fuss made about taking a walk in the safest and pleasantest of all places, a wilderness.

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.

Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play.

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

The last days of this glacial winter are not yet past; we live in 'creation's dawn.' The morning stars still sing together, and the world, though made, is still being made and becoming more beautiful every day.

I don't agree with you in saying that in all human minds there is poetry. Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.

No words will ever describe the exquisite beauty and charm of this mountain park -- Nature's landscape garden at once tenderly beautiful and sublime. No wonder it draws nature-lovers from all over the world.

It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple in autumn, when the sun gold is richest.

In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.

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

The power of imagination is infinite.

Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?

I always enjoyed the hearty society of a snowstorm.

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

C. albus...I think the very loveliest of all the lily family -- a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and so be made better. It puts the wildest mountaineer on his good behavior. With this plant the whole world would seem rich though non other existed.

I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if aware of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathise with the bears.

There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.

Go quietly alone, no harm will befall you.

In the eternal youth of Nature, you may renew your own.

Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another -- killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities.

Hiking. I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains...the se mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.

In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.

Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.

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.

The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity, but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations.

I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind, they had plenty in the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed over the less.

Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old.

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.

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

The blessings of one mountain day, whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.

What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!

Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place.

But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink.

Under the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, which might well have been called the 'Dust and Ashes Act,' any citizen of the United States could take up one hundred and sixty acres of timber land and, by paying two dollars and a half an acre for it, obtain title.

See how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and a calm mind.

Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong enough to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.

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

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world.

All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong.

No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.

But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.

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.

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don't know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Keep in view the common good of the people for all time.

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

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

Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.

Tug on anything in nature and you will find it connected to everything else.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man -- a presumption not supported by all the facts.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains.

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

Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

Nothing truly wild is unclean.

When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.

Come to the woods, for here is rest.

Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

The grand show is eternal
It is always sunrise somewhere.

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.

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

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

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

A lifetime is so little a time that we die before we get ready to live. I should like to study at a college, but then I have to say to myself: You will die before you can do anything else.

Who has not felt the urge to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence?

Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe.

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

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

When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.

I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?

One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.

We live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way.

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

Many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways.

What wonders lie in every mountain day!

The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds, and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

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.

Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.

The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.

Lizards of every temper, style, and color dwell here, seemingly as happy and companionable as the birds and squirrels.

When I first caught sight of Mount Shasta over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.

In this silent, serene wilderness the weary can gain a heart-bath in perfect peace.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity.

Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.

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.

The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

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

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.

You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.

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

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

Most people are on the world, not in it.

I never saw a discontented tree.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

Of all the mountain ranges I have climbed, I like the Sierra Nevada the best.

The practical importance of the preservation of our forests is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.