I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of seeking knowledge and inspiration from books and nature to create something unique.
In this quote, John Burroughs likens his pursuit of knowledge and inspiration to a bee collecting nectar from flowers. Just as a bee transforms nectar into honey, he transforms the ideas and beauty he finds in books and nature into his own creative essence. This highlights the interconnectedness of nature, literature, and creativity, suggesting that genuine inspiration can nourish personal growth and artistic expression.
In practice
Using this quote during a book club meeting to emphasize the importance of literature.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Great attention gets paid to rainforests because of the diversity of life there. Diversity in the oceans is even greater.
If mountain gorillas are to survive and propagate, far more active conservation measures urgently need to be undertaken. The question remains, is it already too late?
How beautiful is the rain!_x000D_ _x000D_ After the dust and the heat,_x000D_ _x000D_ In the broad and fiery street,_x000D_ _x000D_ In the narrow lane,_x000D_ _x000D_ How beautiful is the rain!
Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.
As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them... may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.