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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.

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
Natural
Weary
Care
Compared
Quenched
People
Civilized
Refreshing
Decent
Childlike
Curiosity
Eager
Comfort
Apathy
Attention
Toil
Poor
Shallow

More quotes by John Muir

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When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world. Variant - When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. Variant - Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
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Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play.
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Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.
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Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.
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The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
John Muir
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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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Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.
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The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds, and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.
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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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Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
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But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.
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When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
John Muir
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A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.
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One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made that this is still the morning of creation that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes.
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Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.
John Muir
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We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.
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The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wilderness.
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Our lives are rounded with a sleep.
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He had gone to the higher Sierras... [about Ralph Waldo Emerson's death]
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I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.
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