45 Best John Muir Quotes

John Muir was a naturalist, writer, environmental philosopher and early advocate of the preservation of wilderness in the United States. He is largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park.

Here are some of the best John Muir quotes:

1. In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.

2. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

3. 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.

4. I have 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.

5. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out I found, was really going in

6. The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.

7. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

8. How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

9. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.

10. I might have become a millionaire, but I chose to become a tramp!

11. Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.

12. 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.

13. It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when the sun gold is richest.

14. Going to the mountains is going home.

15. The mountains are calling and I must go

16. Civilization has not much to brag about. It drives its victims in flocks, repressing the growth of individuality.

17. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found

18. We are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the mountains is going home.

19. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

20. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

21. In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks

22. God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.

23. 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.

24. Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

25. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

26. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out I found, was really going in.

27. It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.

28. The mountains are calling and I must go.

29. Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

30. The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

31. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

32. Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

33. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

34. The sun shines not on us but in us.

35. The power of imagination makes us infinite.

36. When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

37. 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.

38. After a whole day in the woods, we are already immortal.

39. When one is alone at night in the depths of these woods, the stillness is at once awful and sublime. Every leaf seems to speak.

40. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness

41. It’s always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

42. Both ocean and sky are already about as rosy as possible the one with stars, the other with dulse, and foam, and wild light.

43. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

44. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

45. I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.

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