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John Muir Quotes
1838–1914 Scotland
John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California, have been read by millions.
Scotland Activists Botanists Engineers Environmentalists Also known as: Muir, John
Random John Muir quote
112 quotes
There is a love of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.
No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them.
Stickeen (1909)
The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.
Our National Parks (1901)
Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.
The Mountains of California (1894)
Sit down in climbing, and hear the pines sing.
To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.
Our National Parks (1901)
God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.
No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done.
Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, "convulsions of nature," etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.
Our National Parks (1901)
We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.
Keep close to Nature's heart … and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
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.
Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!
The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.
I always befriended animals and have said many a good word for them. Even to the least-loved mosquitoes I gave many a meal, and told them to go in peace.
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.
Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.
Going to the mountains is going home.
The air in music the wing forsakes.
The snow is melting into music.
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