Top 280 John Muir Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

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

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

104. “Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

107. “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.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

109. “I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.”

— John Muir

110. “You know that I have not lagged behind in the work of exploring our grand wilderness, and in calling everybody to come and enjoy the thousand blessings they have to offer.”

— John Muir

111. “As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

113. “I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?”

— John Muir

114. “Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek.”

— John Muir

115. “God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”

— John Muir

116. “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.”

— John Muir

117. “I’ve had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I’ve enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.”

— John Muir

118. “Nothing dollarable is safe.”

— John Muir

119. “Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”

— John Muir

120. “Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and 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.”

— John Muir

121. “Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

123. “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening – still all is Beauty!”

— John Muir

124. “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

— John Muir

125. “When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

127. “I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.”

— John Muir

128. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.”

— John Muir

129. “What wonders lie in every mountain day!”

— John Muir

130. “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.”

— John Muir

131. “Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.”

— John Muir

132. “Most people are on the world, not in it – having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them – undiffused seporate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but seporate.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

134. “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.”

— John Muir

135. “Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.”

— John Muir

136. “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.”

— John Muir

137. “The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner.”

— John Muir

138. “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.”

— John Muir

139. “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.”

— John Muir

140. “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?”

— John Muir

141. “Everything in Nature called destruction must be creation-a change from beauty to beauty.”

— John Muir

142. “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.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

144. “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.”

— John Muir

145. “Go quietly alone, no harm will befall you.”

— John Muir

146. “How lavish is Nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.”

— John Muir

147. “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

149. “In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts.”

— John Muir

150. “To ask me whether I could endure to live without friends is absurd. It is easy enough to live out of material sight of friends, but to live without human love is impossible.”

— John Muir