Quote

Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.

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
People
Growing
Knowledge
Ashes
Thought
Dust
Care
Mere
Hard
Sight
Work
Ignorance
Never
Taking
Time
Grace

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These beautiful days ... do not exist as mere pictures - maps hung upon the walls of memory to brighten at times when touched by association or will ... They saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always.
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...Good luck and Good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers.
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…their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.
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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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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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I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.
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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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We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us....How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to have been so always
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In the woods is perpetual youth.
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...therefore all childish fear must be put away.
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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.
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Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away and if they could, they would still be destroyed-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got of their bark hides.
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The tide of visitors will float slowly about the bottom of the valley as harmless scum collecting in hotel and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls eloquent as ever.
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Wander here a whole summer, if you can ... Thousands of wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted
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I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.
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So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees.
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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.
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...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.
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Look up and down and round about you.!
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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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