Top 280 John Muir Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “So also there are tides and floods in the affairs of men, which in some are slight and may be kept within bounds, but in others they overmaster everything.”

— John Muir

152. “Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question, “Why was it made?” goes on and on with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.”

— John Muir

153. “I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring Godful beauty.”

— John Muir

154. “One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.”

— John Muir

155. “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.”

— John Muir

156. “I am very blessed. The Valley is full of people, but they do not annoy me. I revolve in pathless places and in higher rocks than the world and his ribbony wife can reach.”

— John Muir

157. “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

158. “Every good thing great and small needs defense.”

— John Muir

159. “Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.”

— John Muir

160. “But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone. I.”

— John Muir

161. “Having escaped restraint, they were, like some people we know of, afraid of their freedom, did not know what to do with it, and seemed glad to get back into the old familiar bondage.”

— John Muir

162. “It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood.”

— John Muir

163. “The Big Tree is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.”

— John Muir

164. “The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.”

— John Muir

165. “Look! Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God!”

— John Muir

166. “The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.”

— John Muir

167. “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world-the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”

— John Muir

168. “To dine with a glacier on a sunny day is a glorious thing and makes common feast of meat and wine ridiculous. The glacier eats hills and sunbeams.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

170. “I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.”

— John Muir

171. “Ihave precious little sympathy for theselfish proprietyof civilized man, and if awarof racesshould occurbetween the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathise with the bears.”

— John Muir

172. “All that is necessary to make any landscape visible and therefore impressive is to regard it from a new point of view or from an old one with our head upside down – then we behold a new heaven and earth and are born again as if we had gone on a pilgrimage to some far off holy land.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

174. “Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”

— John Muir

175. “All Nature’s wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature’s heart.”

— John Muir

176. “You are yourself a Sequoia. Stop and get acquainted with your brethren... It will do you good.”

— John Muir

177. “This time it is real – all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”

— John Muir

178. “None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.”

— John Muir

179. “Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.”

— John Muir

180. “I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.”

— John Muir

181. “Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light – a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.”

— John Muir

182. “I am often asked if I am not lonely on my solitary excursions. It seems so self-evident that one cannot be lonesome where everything is wild and beautiful and busy and steeped with God that the question is hard to answer.”

— John Muir

183. “No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them.”

— John Muir

184. “Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

186. “Every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality.”

— John Muir

187. “One may as well dam for water tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

— John Muir

188. “Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?”

— John Muir

189. “Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.”

— John Muir

190. “How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!”

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

192. “Come to the woods, for here is rest,... climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”

— John Muir

193. “Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.”

— John Muir

194. “If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or slightly remodel the present ones, leaving all the rest of nature unchanged, we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed.”

— John Muir

195. “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

196. “All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God’s light.”

— John Muir

197. “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue; indeed the body seems one palate, and tingles equally throughout.”

— John Muir

198. “All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.”

— John Muir

199. “Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place.”

— John Muir

200. “Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.”

— John Muir