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Without death and decay, how could life go on?

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
Decay
Death
Without
Life

More quotes by John Burroughs

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I still find each day too short.
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.
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Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.
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The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
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There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.
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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
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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.
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One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.
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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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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To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.
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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The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
John Burroughs
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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.
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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How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!
John Burroughs
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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
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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In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.
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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