Quotes from John Burroughs

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

To me - old age is always ten years older than I am.

I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather.

If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice -- no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.

The lesson in running brooks is that motion is a great purifier and health-producer. When the brook ceases to run, it soon stagnates. It keeps in touch with the great vital currents when it is in motion, and unites with other brooks to help make the river. In motion it soon leaves all mud and sediment behind. Do not proper work and the exercise of will power have the same effect upon our lives?

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, for all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see

You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush.

Nature we have always with us, an in exhaustible store-house of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind and fires the imagination -- health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul.

Science kills credulity and superstition, but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the miraculous universe.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

To interpret Nature is not to improve upon her: it is to draw her out; it is to have an emotional intercourse with her, absorb her, and reproduce her tinged with the colors of the spirit.

He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and cattlemen.

Literature does not grow wild in the woods. Every artist does something more than copy Nature; more comes out in his account than goes into the original experience.

A man can get discouraged many times, but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth! In sorrow he learned this truth — One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars....