“Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?”
“See how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and a calm mind.”
Source: THE YOSEMITE COLLECTION of John Muir (Illustrated): The Yosemite, Our National Parks, Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park, A Rival of the Yosemite, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Yosemite Glaciers, Yosemite in Winter & Yosemite in Spring
“How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“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.”
Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays
“What wonders lie in every mountain day!”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“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.”
Source: STEEP TRAILS: California - Utah - Nevada - Washington - Oregon - The Grand Canyon: Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Essays and Wilderness Studies from the author of The Yosemite, Our National Parks, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf & Picturesque California
“I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.”
“We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us....How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to have been so always”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“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.”
Source: The Wilderness Journeys
“I have enjoyed the trees & scenery of KY exceedingly. How shall I ever tell of the miles & miles of beauty that have been flowing into me in such measure?”
“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.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed.”
Source: Northwest Passages - From the Pen of John Muir: In California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska
“Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Come to the woods, for here is rest.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“I always enjoyed the hearty society of a snowstorm.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if aware of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathise with the bears.”
“In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.”
“[Concerning the Water Ouzel, now called American Dipper:] In a general way his music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools.”
“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.”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“Man has injured every animal he has touched.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“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.”
Source: Trails of wonder: writings on nature and man
“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.”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.”
Source: John Muir: Nature Writings
“The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“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.”
Source: John Muir: Nature Writings
“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.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“There are no accidents in Nature. Every motion of the constantly shifting bodies in the world is timed to the occasion for some definite, fore-ordered end. The flowers blossom in obedience to the same law that marks the course of constellations, and the song of a bird is the echo of a universal symphony. Nature is one, and to me the greatest delight of observation and study is to discover new unities in this all-embracing and eternal harmony.”
“Men use care in purchasing a horse, and are neglectful in choosing friends.”
“But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink.”
“When I first caught sight of (Mount Shasta) over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“The grand show is eternal
It is always sunrise somewhere”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“Nature had gathered her choicest treasures , to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“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”
Source: The Grand Canon of the Colorado
“Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.”
“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.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“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.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“A lifetime is so little a time that we die before we get ready to live. I should like to study at a college, but then I have to say to myself: "You will die before you can do anything else".”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“God cannot save them from fools.”
“I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?”
Source: John Muir's Last Journey: South To The Amazon And East To Africa: Unpublished Journals And Selected Correspondence
“Some people miss flesh as a drunkard misses his dram.”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“I have a low opinion of books; they are but piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention. No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frostbitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“...therefore all childish fear must be put away.”
Source: Travels in Alaska
“Books are but stepping stones to show you where other minds have been.”
