518 Quotes by John Muir

What wonders lie in every mountain day!

Doubly happy, however, is the man whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below

By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life....

Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory...

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot defend themselves or run away. Andfew destroyers of trees ever plant any; nor can planting avail much towardrestoring our grand aboriginal giants. It took more than three thousandyears to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are stillstanding in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mightyforests of the Sierra.

I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention...

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot defend themselves or run away. And few destroyers of trees ever plant any; nor can planting avail much toward restoring our grand aboriginal giants. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.

I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.