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

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In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others
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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.
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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!
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None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.
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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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All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.
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In the eternal youth of Nature, you may renew your own.
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Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.
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See how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required only a calm day and a calm mind.
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The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
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Come to the woods, for here is rest.
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No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons.
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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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When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.
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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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Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
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How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!
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Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.
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Hiking. I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains...the se mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.
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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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