Quote

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

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
Though
Excited
Branches
Swirling
Song
Ears
Forests
Tossing
Every
Silent
Glorious
Incense
Never
Worship
Enthusiasm
Waving
Like
Songs
Trees
Roaring
Quiet
Storm
Cathedrals
Minutes
Cease
Outer
Tree
Tragedy
Wilderness
Bowing

More quotes by John Muir

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As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.
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At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.
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I never saw a discontented tree.
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Our lives are rounded with a sleep.
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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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Man has injured every animal he has touched.
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What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
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I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.
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In this silent, serene wilderness the weary can gain a heart-bath in perfect peace.
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Quench love, and what is left of a man's life but the folding of a few jointed bones and square inches of flesh? Who would call that life?
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To ask me whether I could endure to live without friends is absurd. It is easy enough to live out of material sight of friends, but to live without human love is impossible.
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In nothing does man, with his grand notions of heaven and charity, show forth his innate, low-bred, wild animalism more clearly than in his treatment of his brother beasts. From the shepherd with his lambs to the red-handed hunter, it is the same no recognition of rights - only murder in one form or another.
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Rivers flow not past, but through us tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.
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Society doesn't need that everybody is behaving in the full normal way... like people in a Buddhist monastery... But eccentricity may also connect with the irrational.
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I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?
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The power of imagination is infinite.
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Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.
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John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.
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God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
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The bat­tle we have fought, and are still fight­ing for the forests is a part of the eter­nal con­flict between right and wrong, and we can­not expect to see the end of it. …So we must count on watch­ing and striv­ing for these trees, and should always be glad to find any­thing so surely good and noble to strive for.
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