518 Quotes by John Muir

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.

As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the fountain azure of the Sierra.

In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world-the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

Night is coming on and I am filled with indescribable loneliness. Felt feverish; bathed in a black, silent stream;.

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.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

The soft light of morning falls upon ripening forests of oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Nature is thoughtful and calm.

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit – the cosmos?

Several times Muir was threatened with a successful business career, but each time he escaped again into the wilderness.