John Muir Quotes

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

The grand show is eternal It is always sunrise somewhere

I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

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.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

Wilderness is a necessity... there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

To sit in solitude, to think in solitude with only the music of the stream and the cedar to break the flow of silence, there lies the value of wilderness.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

Wander a whole summer if you can. Time will not be taken from the sum of life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.

God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news

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.

Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

Any fool can destroy trees, they cannot run away.

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

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.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world.

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.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

The sun shines not on us but in us.

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

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.

Yosemite Park... None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.

Look! Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God!

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

Come to the woods, for here is rest.

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

Going into the woods, is going home

Lizards of every temper, style, and color dwell here, seemingly as happy and companionable as the birds and squirrels.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings.

But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Going to the mountains is going home.

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.

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

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity.