Quote

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

John Muir

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John Muir
Age: 76 †
Born: 1838
Born: April 21
Died: 1914
Died: December 24
Author
Autobiographer
Botanist
Conservationist
Ecologist
Engineer
Essayist
Explorer
Geologist
Glaciologist
Inventor
Mountaineer
Naturalist
J. Muir
Heart
Environment
Climbing
Sierra
Week
Wilderness
Mountaineering
Break
Woods
Naturalist
Clear
Environmental
Awhile
Away
Mountain
Wash
Keep
Clean
Hiking
Spirit
Spend
Climb
Nature
Close
Climbs
Yosemite

More quotes by John Muir

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How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows.
John Muir
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When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.
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There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.
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The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.
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When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
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One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
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Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.
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The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?
John Muir
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Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
John Muir
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I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?
John Muir
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The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.
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...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
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A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.
John Muir
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How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!
John Muir
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I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir
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Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
John Muir
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My meals were easily made, for they were all alike and simple, only a cupful of tea and bread.
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Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
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Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.
John Muir
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A lifetime is so little a time that we die before we get ready to live. I should like to study at a college, but then I have to say to myself: You will die before you can do anything else.
John Muir