“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
Author detail
A Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States.
Quotes
Showing 1-20 of 77
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings: Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine into flowers, the winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms, their energy and car...”
“On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous ins...”
“It seems strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandanged and their ears stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were lo...”
“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”
“Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.”
“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save tim...”
“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe [Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]”
“Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”
“How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.”
“The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach g...”
“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...”
“The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and...”
“During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure...”
“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature's forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts a...”