John Burroughs Quotations

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

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

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

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

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

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

If you think you can do it, you can.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

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

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

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.

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

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.

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

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

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

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

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

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

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

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.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ""To rise above little things

He had 2.7 million veterans under him. He carries a pretty heavy stick.

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 ar

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.

We are made strong by what we overcome.

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.

The secret of happiness is having something meaningful to do, seeking purpose

You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins toblame somebody else and stops trying.

It's nothing she would ever have given away. It's value is really sentimental.

In sorrow he learned this truth: Though one may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth

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

Happiness comes most to persons who seek her least, and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought; it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.

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.

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.

Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.

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

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.

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.

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.

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

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

To see Earth fully we already need to love it

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

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.

I still find each day too short..

I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather.

I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.

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.

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

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

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

Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.

In the order of nature we may behold the ways of the Eternal.

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.

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand-to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.

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

Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives - and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

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.

The fuel in the earth will be exhausted in a thousand or more years, and its mineral wealth, but man will find substitutes for these in the winds, the waves, the sun's heat, and so forth.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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!

In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.

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

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.

One summer day, while I was walking along the country road on the farm where I was born, a section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. Amid the general stillness and immobility about me the effect was quite startling. ... It was the sudden summing up of half a century or more of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long years, and gravity did the rest.

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

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

In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!

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.

Without death and decay, how could life go on?

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

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

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.

Science is a capital or fund perpetually reinvested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon, to set himself up in business with. What an enormous sum Darwin availed himself of and reinvested! Not so in literature; to every poet, to every artist, it is still the first day of creation, so far as the essentials of his task are concerned. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new-grown.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 auroræ of the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery.

How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.

....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.

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.

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