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The secret of happiness is something to do.
John Burroughs
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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Secret
Happiness
Something
More quotes by John Burroughs
Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.
John Burroughs
One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them ... It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests.
John Burroughs
I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.
John Burroughs
In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.
John Burroughs
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.
John Burroughs
There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? Something to do some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all people and what a wretched world it would be.
John Burroughs
My group, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, was one of the principle organizers. So, there was this campaign to support the United Nations General Assembly in asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legality of threat or use of nuclear weapons.
John Burroughs
[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.
John Burroughs
There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.
John Burroughs
For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring!
John Burroughs
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.
John Burroughs
How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!
John Burroughs
I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
John Burroughs
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.
John Burroughs
The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.
John Burroughs
....success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.
John Burroughs
We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
John Burroughs
You cannot cause disproportionate damage to the environment you cannot harm neutral states. The court said that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to the international law of armed conflict.
John Burroughs
