Top 280 John Muir Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Keep in view the common good of the people for all time.”

— John Muir

52. “Books are but steeping stones to show you where other minds have been.”

— John Muir

53. “The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

56. “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.”

— John Muir

57. “Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society...”

— John Muir

58. “Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe.”

— John Muir

59. “How many hearts with warm, red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining? A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours.”

— John Muir

60. “Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.”

— John Muir

61. “Who reports the works and ways of the clouds, those wondrous creations coming into being every day like freshly upheaved mountains?”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

63. “One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes...”

— John Muir

64. “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

— John Muir

65. “There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.”

— John Muir

66. “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.”

— John Muir

67. “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!”

— John Muir

68. “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got of their bark hides.”

— John Muir

69. “Any fool can destroy trees, they cannot run away.”

— John Muir

70. “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.”

— John Muir

71. “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?”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

74. “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.”

— John Muir

75. “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

76. “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.”

— John Muir

77. “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.”

— John Muir

78. “Bread without butter or coffee without milk is an awful calamity, as if everything before being put in our mouth must first be held under a cow.”

— John Muir

79. “I always befriended animals and have said many a good word for them. Even to the least-loved mosquitoes I gave many a meal, and told them to go in peace.”

— John Muir

80. “How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!”

— John Muir

81. “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.”

— John Muir

82. “I made these Sierra trips, carrying only a sackful of bread with a little tea and sugar, and was thus independent and free...”

— John Muir

83. “Man has injured every animal he has touched.”

— John Muir

84. “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.”

— John Muir

85. “What is worthwhile in life? I think it is worth living and dreaming. If you don’t you may be dead anyhow – inside.”

— John Muir

86. “The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.”

— John Muir

87. “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

88. “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

89. “Large flocks of butterflies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness.”

— John Muir

90. “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

91. “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

92. “Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest!”

— John Muir

93. “Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.”

— John Muir

94. “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.”

— John Muir

95. “Few in these hot, dim, strenuous times are quite sane or free; choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so much good and making so much money – or so little, they are no longer good for themselves.”

— John Muir

96. “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.”

— John Muir

97. “One can make a day of any size.”

— John Muir

98. “While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

— John Muir

99. “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

100. “The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wilderness.”

— John Muir