Quote

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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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
Would
Tree
Bark
Fun
Dollar
Running
Forests
Saplings
Away
Trees
Redwoods
Cannot
Destroyed
Primeval
Stills
Destroy
Chased
Still
Dollars
Hunted
Long
Fool
Hides

More quotes by 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 ... The whole wilderness is unity and interrelation, is alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.
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All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light.
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…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.
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Do behold the king in his glory, King Sequoia. Behold! Behold! seems all I can say.... Well may I fast, not from bread but from business, bookmaking, duty doing & other trifles.... I’m in the woods woods woods, & they are in mee-ee-ee.... I wish I were wilder & so bless Sequoia I will be.
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Take a course in good water and air and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone no harm will befall you.
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None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.
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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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He had gone to the higher Sierras... [about Ralph Waldo Emerson's death]
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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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Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
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What is worthwhile in life? I think it is worth living and dreaming. If you don't you may be dead anyhow - inside.
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The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.
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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.
John Muir
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Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
John Muir
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How many hearts with warm, red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining? A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours.
John Muir