Quote

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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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Sort
Sounds
Roar
Sound
Lows
Complacent
Purr
Night
Winter
Transmit
Transmits
Better
Mountain
Stroke
Growl
Always
Summer
Strokes
Breezes
Air
Breeze
Sharper
Hear
Steady
Distinctly
Sides
North
Sullen

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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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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!
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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.
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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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[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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In fact, the United States is building up its trident nuclear sub fleet in the Pacific, based at Bangor, Washington to build up its capabilities to wage nuclear war.
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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.
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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.
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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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Temperament lies behind mood behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture and finally the power of climate and environment and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
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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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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.
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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
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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.
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....success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.
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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 want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.
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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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The overall quantity of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline slowly.
John Burroughs
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It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
John Burroughs