Quote

Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.

John Muir

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Everywhere
Animal
Always
Men
Blight
Landscape

More quotes by John Muir

Image
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
Image
All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.
John Muir
Image
Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
John Muir
Image
What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
John Muir
Image
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
Image
Our lives are rounded with a sleep.
John Muir
Image
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.
John Muir
Image
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
Image
A lifetime is so little a time that we die before we get ready to live. I should like to study at a college, but then I have to say to myself: You will die before you can do anything else.
John Muir
Image
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.
John Muir
Image
Going to the mountains is going home.
John Muir
Image
Go quietly alone, no harm will befall you.
John Muir
Image
The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir
Image
See how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required only a calm day and a calm mind.
John Muir
Image
Come to the woods, for here is rest.
John Muir
Image
Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
John Muir
Image
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
John Muir
Image
...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
John Muir
Image
God cannot save them from fools.
John Muir
Image
Wilderness is a necessity ... They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
John Muir