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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

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Natural history is a matter of observation it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds and squirrels and flowers are not always in season, but philosophy we have always with us. It is a crop which we can grow and reap at all times and in all places and it has its own value and brings its own satisfaction.
John Burroughs
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Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover - to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and with no mercenary ends, accepts all.
John Burroughs
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All sounds are sharper in winter the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.
John Burroughs
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Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.
John Burroughs
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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
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I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.
John Burroughs
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The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
John Burroughs
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Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.
John Burroughs
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We've been in a period of relative stability and cooperation since the end of the Cold War among the world's major powers, but that may not always exist. And certainly one could even predict that there will be periods of hostility or tension ahead.
John Burroughs
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Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
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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
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The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.
John Burroughs
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The life of nature we must meet halfway it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.
John Burroughs
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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
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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
John Burroughs
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[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.
John Burroughs
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[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.
John Burroughs
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The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or crook.
John Burroughs
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The thing that I focus on because I don't think it gets enough attention is that among the world's major powers, there is still a nuclear balance of terror - I'm talking about between the United States and Russia, the United States and China.
John Burroughs
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The International Court of Justice (a.k.a. World Court) is the judicial branch of the United Nations and in the early 1990's a campaign started and it was supported by civil society non-governmental groups around the world.
John Burroughs