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The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

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
Given
June
Part
Developed
Mind
Bones
Winter
Fleshy
Summer
Sinew
Blood
Wintertime
Literature
Tissues
Speak
Bone

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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.
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Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
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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.
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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!
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Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have become identified with state power.
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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.
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Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
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One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth.
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The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
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Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.
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A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
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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.
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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
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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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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
John Burroughs
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To find the universal elements enough to find the air and the water exhilarating to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
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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.
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....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.
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How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.
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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