Quotes from John Muir

Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

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.

But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.

C. albus...I think the very loveliest of all the lily family,- a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and so be made better. It puts the wildest mountaineer on his good behavior. With this plant the whole world would seem rich though non other existed.

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.

therefore all childish fear must be put away.

In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others

But think of the hearts of these whales, beating warm against the sea, day and night, through dark and light, on and on for centuries; how the red blood must rush and gurgle in and out, bucketfuls, barrelfuls at a beat!

This is Nature's own reservation, and every lover of wildness will rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended.

Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,—part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.

But it is in the darkest nights, when storms are blowing and the agitated waves are phosphorescent, that the most impressive displays are made.

In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.

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.

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.

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

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

As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways

Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Who has not felt the urge to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence?

Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God's wild fields, we find more than we seek.

An eagle soaring above a sheer cliff, where I suppose its nest is, makes another striking show of life, and helps to bring to mind the other people of the so-called solitude—deer in the forest caring for their young; the strong, well-clad, well-fed bears; the lively throng of squirrels; the blessed birds, great and small, stirring and sweetening the groves; and the clouds of happy insects filling the sky with joyous hum as part and parcel of the down-pouring sunshine.

We were glad, however, to get within reach of information…

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit — the cosmos?

As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the fountain azure of the Sierra.