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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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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Would
Burden
Mere
Books
Reading
Spirit
Doe
Book
Much
Weariness

More quotes by John Burroughs

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The International Court of Justice (a.k.a. World Court) is the judicial branch of the United Nations and in the early 1990's a campaign started and it was supported by civil society non-governmental groups around the world.
John Burroughs
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Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.
John Burroughs
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Science makes no claim to infallibility it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.
John Burroughs
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The life of nature we must meet halfway it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background.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.
John Burroughs
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Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.
John Burroughs
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Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
John Burroughs
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The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
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
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We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.
John Burroughs
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Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
John Burroughs
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A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.
John Burroughs
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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.
John Burroughs
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Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
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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.
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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Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.
John Burroughs
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[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.
John Burroughs
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Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,—the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.
John Burroughs
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Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.
John Burroughs