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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How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!
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Go quietly alone, no harm will befall you.
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Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.
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...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
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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 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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...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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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 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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Strange the faithless fuss made about taking a walk in the safest and pleasantest of all places, a wilderness.
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When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.
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One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
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There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties
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These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
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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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Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
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Nature had gathered her choicest treasures , to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her
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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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I always enjoyed the hearty society of a snowstorm.
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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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