Quote

Love is the measure of life only so far as we love do we really live.

John Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Measure
Live
Really
Love
Life

More quotes by John Burroughs

Image
In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.
John Burroughs
Image
I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.
John Burroughs
Image
Certainly in the United States, you have a constituency in the form of the weapons laboratories, and you also have the branches of the armed services that are involved with nuclear weapons deployment, especially the naval submarine operations and also the air force's land-based ICBM operations. So they have a big lobby in Washington.
John Burroughs
Image
A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
John Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.
John Burroughs
Image
The place to observe nature is where you are.
John Burroughs
Image
Oh, Spring is surely coming, Her couriers fill the air Each morn are new arrivals, Each night her ways prepare I scent her fragrant garments, Her foot is on the stair.
John Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds.
John Burroughs
Image
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.
John Burroughs
Image
Without death and decay, how could life go on?
John Burroughs
Image
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
John Burroughs
Image
Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,—the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.
John Burroughs