Quote

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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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Lovers
Seas
Sea
Conquered
Accepting
Freely
Gives
Sail
Bathes
True
Camps
Revels
Nature
Lover
Mercenary
Ends
Woods
Sails
Giving
Rivers
Accepts

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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.
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Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.
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.
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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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Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.
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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One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds.
John Burroughs
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A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.
John Burroughs
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The place to observe nature is where you are.
John Burroughs
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One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.
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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Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
John Burroughs
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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.
John Burroughs
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Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.
John Burroughs
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The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
John Burroughs
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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
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We have produced some good walkers and saunterers, and some noted climbers but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the people dislike and despise walking.
John Burroughs
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It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
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