Quote

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

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
Extract
Bees
Sweetness
Damage
Handle
Flower
Doe
Book

More quotes by John Muir

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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
John Muir
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When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
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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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God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.
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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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Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.
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Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.
John Muir
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Wander here a whole summer, if you can ... Thousands of wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted
John Muir
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I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth—bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way.
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I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.
John Muir
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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.
John Muir
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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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...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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Wilderness is a necessity... there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.
John Muir
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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.
John Muir
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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.
John Muir
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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
John Muir
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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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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.
John Muir
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Rivers flow not past, but through us tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.
John Muir