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
I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot.
Interpretation
Trust your instincts and embrace your true self, regardless of the outcome.
In this quote, John Muir emphasizes the importance of authentic self-expression and the value of following one's instincts. He acknowledges that there may be positive or negative consequences, but he encourages embracing one's true nature to experience the results of one's choices and actions.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
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.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
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".
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.
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.
...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.
Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.
It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins.
Healthy feet can feel the very heart of Mother Earth.
Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.
We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member.
For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so Then people long on pilgrimage to go And palmers to be seeking foreign strands To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.
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