Looking for the best and inspirational John Muir quotes?
John Muir was the founder of the Sierra Club and one of America’s greatest conservationists.
Muir was born on April 21, 1838, in Dunbar, Scotland. His father immigrated to the US right before Muir’s sixth birthday and settled in a small town near Oakland, California. The family moved again when Muir was just 14 years old to a farm near Martinez. He dropped out of school at age 15 to help his father on the farm. He had a series of jobs: as a shepherd, a homebuilder, an assistant teacher for his sister’s school in Martinez valley, and an apprentice carpenter.
He is best known for establishing Yosemite National Park, and his writings about nature, especially in The Yosemite. In 1869, he published an article in The Atlantic Monthly on “The Treasures of the Yosemite.”
John Muir’s life is an inspiration for all Americans who care about their country’s natural heritage and want its future generations to be able to enjoy these magical places.
Check these inspirational quotes about nature and adventure that will get you pumped up for your next outdoor outing.
79 Inspirational John Muir Quotes
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
“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.”
“The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.”
“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
“Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
“There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.”
“Come to the woods, for here is rest, …climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”
“Nature is ever at work; building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest, but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.”
“Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing”
“One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.”
“Everybody needs beauty, as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”
“Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested.”
“One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.”
“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can. “
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
“Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!”
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself, whether recognized or not, and however covered by cares and duties”
“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.”
“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.”
“None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.”
“Everything in Nature called destruction must be creation-a change from beauty to beauty.”
“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
“Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.”
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.”
“Wherever there were glaciers, the world was in a constant state of creation.”
“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
“Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.”
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
“I ran home in the moonlight with long, firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.”
“Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal.”
“At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.”
“Come to the woods; for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.”
“Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”
“Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.”
“Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.”
“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.”
“Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”
“There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream.”
“And into the woods I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
“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.”
“One must labor for beauty as for bread.”
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
“The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.”
“Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.”
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
“The sun shines not on us but in us.”
“There is a love of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.”
“One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
“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!”
“The world is big and I want to get a good look at it before it gets dark.”
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
“The mountains are fountains of men, as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains – mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature’s workshops.”
“The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends.”
“Going to the woods is going home.”
“On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. … Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.”
“Nothing truly wild is unclean.”
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away.”
“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”
“One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
“The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.”
“Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.”
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.”
“Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.”
“Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”
“The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.”
“Most people are on the world, not in it.”
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”
“Then, after a long fireside rest and a glance at my notebook, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer.”
“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”
“Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
