Quote

The life of nature we must meet halfway it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background.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.

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
Life
Vast
Withdrawn
Meet
Guarded
Secret
Neutral
Order
Halfway
Nature
Shy
Wells
Background
Well
Secrets
Blends
Must
Backgrounds
Initiated

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The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
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Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
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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.
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Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have become identified with state power.
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The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.
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Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.
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One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
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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.
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There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
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The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.
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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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The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
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[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.
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Without death and decay, how could life go on?
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