Quote

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

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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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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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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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I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
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The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.
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Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.
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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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I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?
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Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe.
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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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Some people miss flesh as a drunkard misses his dram.
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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?
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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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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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I have enjoyed the trees & scenery of KY exceedingly. How shall I ever tell of the miles & miles of beauty that have been flowing into me in such measure?
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All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light.
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The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.
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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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The Big Tree is Nature's forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.
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I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.
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