John Burroughs

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”

“My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.”

“The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite? Nothing...”

“More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any othe...”

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

“No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.”

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

“We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.”

“The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.”

“As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in thi...”

“The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.”

“Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.”

“Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.”

“You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.”

“Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all becaus...”

“Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.”

“As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.”

“There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.”

“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.”

“All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.”