Quote

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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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Garden
Satisfy
Flower
Hook
Sweet
Bees
Rich
Honey
Enough
Possess
Provident
Must
Stores
Crook
Great
Lays
Blooms
Every
Ambition
Crooks

More quotes by John Burroughs

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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.
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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.
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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.
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I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.
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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.
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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.
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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
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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.
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Science makes no claim to infallibility it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.
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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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Happiness comes most to persons who seek it least and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought, it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.
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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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
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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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We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.
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Temperament lies behind mood behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture and finally the power of climate and environment and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
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The budget for nuclear forces in the United States is on the order of $25 billion or so. That includes warheads, delivery systems, command and control does not include environmental clean-up, which is another maybe $10 billion or so. So that's about 5% of the U.S. military budget.
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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The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.
John Burroughs
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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