Quote

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.

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
Language
Ears
Difficult
Minds
Faint
Human
Air
Winds
Humans
Wind
Spoken
Mind
Written
Thin
Eyes
Mostly
Stars
Substance
Eye
Clouds

More quotes by John Muir

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So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees.
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Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.
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Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
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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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Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.
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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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Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
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...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
John Muir
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When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world. Variant - When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. Variant - Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
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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.
John Muir
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We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.
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How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows.
John Muir
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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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In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.
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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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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Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society.
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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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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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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.
John Muir