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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.

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

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

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the...

grandest special temple of nature I was ever permitted to enter.

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and give strength to body and soul alike.

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes,the heart of the people is always right.

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

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

I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both...

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

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...

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

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.

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.

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.

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

What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!

John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from...