Quotes from John Muir

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

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.

Going to the mountains is going home.

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.

Everybody needs beauty...places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe [ Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal ]

On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.

Going to the woods is going home.

Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties

Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

A man, in his books, may be said to walk the earth a long time after he is gone.

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

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

Keep in view the common good of the people for all time.

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".

To ask me whether I could endure to live without friends is absurd. It is easy enough to live out of material sight of friends, but to live without human love is impossible.

Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe.