Explore Quotes by John Muir

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

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

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

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 out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature's forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

So also there are tides and floods in the affairs of men, which in some are slight and may be kept within bounds, but in others they overmaster everything.

One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

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

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

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

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

What is worthwhile in life? I think it is worth living and dreaming. If you don't you may be dead anyhow - inside.

It may not be easy, life isn't easy, but dreams keep you alive.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

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

One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.