Quotes from John Muir


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Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.


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.


Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.


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


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.


How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!


The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world.


Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.


Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!


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


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.


The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest 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.


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


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.


The power of imagination makes us infinite.


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


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.


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


The mountains are calling and I must go.