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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.

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
Walk
Walks
Cannot
Life
Peaks
Mountain

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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.
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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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There is an international treaty framework for this. It's the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Most countries in the world are members of the treaty.
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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.
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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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.
John Burroughs
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O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best.
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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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 art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
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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.
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The story goes on in the sense that at a most basic level, the United States ignored, that is violated, the United Nations charter when it invaded Iraq in 2003. This is not wise policy.
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You cannot use [nuclear weapons] to target civilians you cannot use them against military targets if they have indiscriminate effects on civilians in addition to the attack on the military target.
John Burroughs
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The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us.
John Burroughs
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The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
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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He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
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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.
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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.
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Natural history is a matter of observation it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds and squirrels and flowers are not always in season, but philosophy we have always with us. It is a crop which we can grow and reap at all times and in all places and it has its own value and brings its own satisfaction.
John Burroughs