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Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

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
Significant
Serious
Sojourn
Always
Maker
Men
Makers
World
Occupation
Atheist
Gods

More quotes by John Burroughs

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Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
John Burroughs
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Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Blessed is the person who has some congenial work, some occupation in which to place one's heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces that are in him or her.
John Burroughs
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The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us.
John Burroughs
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The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.
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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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
John Burroughs
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The place to observe nature is where you are.
John Burroughs
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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
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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
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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[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.
John Burroughs
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Some men are like nails, very easily drawn others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
John Burroughs
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O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best.
John Burroughs
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You cannot use [nuclear weapons] to target civilians you cannot use them against military targets if they have indiscriminate effects on civilians in addition to the attack on the military target.
John Burroughs
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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
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Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten!
John Burroughs
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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
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The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
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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In 2002 the [George] Bush administration effectively put an end to negotiations of an agreement which would have established inspection procedures to ensure or to monitor compliance with the existing legal ban on biological weapons.
John Burroughs