John Muir on Nature

"Hoping that we will be able to do something for wildness and make the mountains glad."

"There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself."

"Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest."

"The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted."

"How terribly downright must seem the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society."

"We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."

"Take a course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you."

"Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds, or the written music of water written in river-lines?"

"Keep close to Nature's heart … and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

"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."

"This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest … in our magnificent National Parks … Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world."

"In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine."

"Good walkers can go anywhere in these hospitable mountains without artificial ways."

"Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions."

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

"None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild."

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

"John Muir, Esquire, a distinguished naturalist and explorer"

"Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed Nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!"

"Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!"

"One touch of nature makes all the world kin."

"Man has injured every animal he has touched."

"One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul."

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

"Going to the mountains is going home."

"John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe"

"Many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways."

"No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening — still all is Beauty!"

"John Muir has been a role model to generations of Californians and to conservationists around the world. He taught us to be active and to enjoy — but at the same time protect — our parks, our beaches, and our mountains."