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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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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Weed
Plant
Garden
Human
Humans
Weeds
Tempted
Plants

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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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In the order of nature we may behold the ways of the Eternal.
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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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One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth.
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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.
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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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What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.
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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.
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The life of nature we must meet halfway it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background.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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I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.
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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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In 2002 the [George] Bush administration effectively put an end to negotiations of an agreement which would have established inspection procedures to ensure or to monitor compliance with the existing legal ban on biological weapons.
John Burroughs
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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
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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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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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The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.
John Burroughs
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Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Blessed is the person who has some congenial work, some occupation in which to place one's heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces that are in him or her.
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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 secret of happiness is something to do.
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