Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

The world’s big and I want to have 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.

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places...

When we try to pick out any­thing by itself, we find it hitched to every­thing else in the Uni­verse.

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

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

The sun shines not on us, but in us.

Nothing truly wild is unclean.

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

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,...

Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Men use care in purchasing a horse, and are neglectful in choosing friends

The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.

Going to the woods is going home.

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

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

Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.

This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe[Muir’s home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.

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

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

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

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

Certainly this Joaquin Canyon is the most remarkable in many ways of all I have entered.

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save...

Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life...

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

Tug on anything at all and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.

Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen

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...

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

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.

The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

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...

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm,waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm likeworship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, theirsongs never cease....

keep in view the common good of the people for all time.

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming,...

Most people are on the world, not in it – having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them – undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate