John Burroughs Quotes & Sayings

We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry. — John Burroughs

The kingdom of heaven in not a place but a state of mind. — John Burroughs

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl. — John Burroughs

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking — John Burroughs

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. — John Burroughs

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. — John Burroughs

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion. — John Burroughs

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him. — John Burroughs

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world. — John Burroughs

That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges. — John Burroughs

Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding. — John Burroughs

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. — John Burroughs

One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth. — John Burroughs

Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it. — John Burroughs

I am in love with this world ... I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings. — John Burroughs

I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of my family tree. — John Burroughs

I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows ... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round. — John Burroughs

Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws. — John Burroughs

One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds. — John Burroughs

I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the tree-tops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men. — John Burroughs

One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth. — John Burroughs

We are made strong by what we overcome. — John Burroughs

[T]he cold warms me - after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove. — John Burroughs

Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man. — John Burroughs

Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians. — John Burroughs

If you think you can do it, you can. — John Burroughs

The sunbeams are welcome now. They seem like pure electricity - like friendly and recuperating lightning. Are we led to think electricity abounds only in summer, when we see in the storm-clouds as it were, the veins and ore-beds of it? I imagine it is equally abundant in winter, and more equable and better tempered. Who ever breasted a snowstorm without being excited and exhilarated, as if this meteor had come charged with latent aurorae of the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery. — John Burroughs

The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon
the beauty and the wonder of the world. — John Burroughs

For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment
the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country
no bluebird in spring! — John Burroughs

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go. — John Burroughs

Love is the measure of life; only so far as we love do we really live. — John Burroughs

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
— John Burroughs

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently, as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols. — John Burroughs

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. — John Burroughs

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral. — John Burroughs

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. — John Burroughs

Love sharpens the eye, the ear, the touch; it quickens the feet, it steadies the hand, it arms against the wet and the cold.
What we love to do, that we do well.
To know is not all; it is only half.
To love is the other half — John Burroughs

I still find each day too short.. — John Burroughs

The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape. — John Burroughs

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice. — John Burroughs

Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover - to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and with no mercenary ends, accepts all. — John Burroughs

Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten! — John Burroughs

The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or crook. — John Burroughs

Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp. — John Burroughs

Natural history is a matter of observation; it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds and squirrels and flowers are not always in season, but philosophy we have always with us. It is a crop which we can grow and reap at all times and in all places and it has its own value and brings its own satisfaction. — John Burroughs

The most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of you has the whole wealth of the universe at your very door. All that I ever had, and still have, may be yours by stretching forth your hand and taking it. — John Burroughs

[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also. — John Burroughs

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy. — John Burroughs

Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution. — John Burroughs

I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly. — John Burroughs

In the order of nature we may behold the ways of the Eternal. — John Burroughs

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind. — John Burroughs

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. — John Burroughs

The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! — John Burroughs

Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses ... The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. — John Burroughs

Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also. — John Burroughs

The deeper our insight into the methods of nature ... the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us. — John Burroughs

The God of the Puritans ... was a monster too horrible to contemplate. — John Burroughs

The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us. — John Burroughs

I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride. — John Burroughs

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another. — John Burroughs

The Universe is a pretty big place ... And the one thing I know about nature is it hates to waste anything. So I guess I'd say if it is just us, an awful lot of space is going to waste. The earth is not alone, it is not like a single apple on a tree; there are many apples on the tree, and there are many trees in the orchard. — John Burroughs

Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night. — John Burroughs

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention. — John Burroughs

The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days. — John Burroughs

In the printed page the only real things are the paper and the ink; the white spaces play the same part in aiding the eye to take in the meaning of the print as do the black letters. — John Burroughs

Look up at the miracle of the falling snow, - the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. — John Burroughs

You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying. — John Burroughs

O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best ... — John Burroughs

If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates. — John Burroughs

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber. — John Burroughs

Literature is an investment of genius which has dividends to all subsequent times — John Burroughs

I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through. — John Burroughs

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: 'To rise above little things'. — John Burroughs

One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them ... It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests. — John Burroughs

IT is reported of Margaret Fuller that she said she accepted the universe. "Gad, she'd better!" retorted Carlyle. Carlyle himself did not accept the universe in a very whole-hearted manner. Looking up at the midnight stars, he exclaimed: "A sad spectacle! If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!" — John Burroughs

The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology. — John Burroughs

Nature we have always with us, an in exhaustible store-house of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind and fires the imagination -- health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul. — John Burroughs

Success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it. — John Burroughs

Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides. — John Burroughs

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature ... — John Burroughs

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world. — John Burroughs

I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey. — John Burroughs

Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work. — John Burroughs

We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks. — John Burroughs

The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche. — John Burroughs

Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these. — John Burroughs

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate. — John Burroughs

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it. — John Burroughs

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare. — John Burroughs

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then. — John Burroughs

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me. — John Burroughs

The rocks have a history; gray and weatherworn, they are veterans of many battles; they have most of them marched in the ranks of vast stone brigades during the ice age; they have been torn from the hills, recruited from the mountaintops, and marshaled on the plains and in the valleys; and now the elemental war is over, there they lie waging a gentle but incessant warfare with time and slowly, oh, so slowly, yielding to its attacks! — John Burroughs

There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? Something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all people and what a wretched world it would be. — John Burroughs

If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart. — John Burroughs

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. — John Burroughs

The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap. — John Burroughs

The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat, he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls, he is crushed. — John Burroughs

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. — John Burroughs

The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us. — John Burroughs