Quotes from John Muir

Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.

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.

Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work ... to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.

I bade adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

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.

Go quietly alone, no harm will befall you.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

Nothing truly wild is unclean.

When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.

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; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

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

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.

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress...

Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.

Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing