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
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".
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses a deep connection to nature and a commitment to understanding it.
John Muir emphasizes the importance of immersing oneself in nature to truly appreciate and understand its beauty and complexity. He conveys a lifelong dedication to experiencing the elements of the natural world, suggesting that through this connection, one can gain profound insights into life and existence.
Themes
NatureConnectionUnderstandingBeautyExperience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a nature retreat to inspire participants to connect deeply with their surroundings.
More from John Muir
All quotes →When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
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
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John MuirRead
Similar quotes
Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.
Heinrich HeineRead
The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness
Virginia WoolfRead
We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.
Simon SchamaRead
It shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing else can be so pretty! A cluster of vapor, the cream of the milky way, a sort of celestial cheese, churned into light.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.
H. P. LovecraftRead
A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead