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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
Weeds
Tempted
Plants
Weed
Plant
Garden
Human
Humans

More quotes by John Burroughs

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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.
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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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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
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If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature.
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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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Some men are like nails, very easily drawn others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
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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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O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best.
John Burroughs
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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.
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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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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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.
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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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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Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.
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.
John Burroughs
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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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The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
John Burroughs
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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.
John Burroughs
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Certainly in the United States, you have a constituency in the form of the weapons laboratories, and you also have the branches of the armed services that are involved with nuclear weapons deployment, especially the naval submarine operations and also the air force's land-based ICBM operations. So they have a big lobby in Washington.
John Burroughs