Quote

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.

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
Nature
Sing
Gardens
Birdsong
Live
Bird
Interpret
Yosemite
Heart
Garden
Winds
Avalanches
Long
Rocks
Flood
Waterfalls
World
Wind
Birds
Glaciers
Hear
Near
Sierra
Learn
Storm
Naturalist
Acquaint
Language
Wild
Interpreting
Avalanche

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Going to the mountains is going home.
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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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Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
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Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.
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I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake feeling sure I was going to learn something.
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The power of imagination is infinite.
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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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...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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The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.
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Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?
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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.
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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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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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Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.
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Wander a whole summer if you can. Time will not be taken from the sum of life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.
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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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I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news
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