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Quotes by John Muir


The power of imagination makes us infinite.
– John Muir
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.
– John Muir
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
– John Muir
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
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
– John Muir
I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
– John Muir
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
– John Muir
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
– John Muir
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
– John Muir
Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.
– John Muir
Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.
– John Muir
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.
– John Muir
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
– John Muir
The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
– John Muir
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
– John Muir
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
– John Muir
Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!
– John Muir
Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
– John Muir
We all travel the milky way together, trees and men... trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much.
– John Muir
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
– John Muir
How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make---leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone---we all dwell in a house of one room---the world with a firmament for its roof---and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.
– John Muir
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
To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.
– John Muir
There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.
– John Muir
The mountains are calling and I must go.
– John Muir
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