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.
John MuirRead
Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Engaging with nature can rejuvenate your spirit and well-being.
In this quote, John Muir emphasizes the healing and revitalizing effects of nature. He suggests that by immersing ourselves in the natural world, we can experience a sense of renewal, much like the perpetual freshness of the environment around us. The invitation to go quietly and alone highlights the personal and introspective journey that one can undertake in nature, free from the distractions of modern life.
Themes
NatureRenewalWellbeingSolitudeHealing
In practice
Example use cases
During a group retreat, you might say, 'As John Muir once said, 'Take a course in good water and air...' to encourage participants to immerse themselves in nature.
More from John Muir
All quotes βWhen we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
John MuirRead
As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".
John MuirRead
The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.
John MuirRead
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.
John MuirRead
...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.
John MuirRead
Similar quotes
A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage.
William BlakeRead
The reason to preserve wilderness is that we need it. We need wilderness of all kinds, large and small, public and private. Wee need to go now and again into places where our work is disallowed, where our hopes and plans have no standing. We need to come into the presence of the unqualified and mysterious formality of Creation.
Wendell BerryRead
If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)β¦ Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be.
Murray BookchinRead
There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.
Robert SouthRead
We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it... In short, we need a water ethic-a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand.
Sandra PostelRead
Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.
Vandana ShivaRead