John Muir Quotes on Nature (15 Quotes)

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.

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 snowflowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.

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.

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.

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!

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it ... So we must count on watching and striving for these trees, and should always be glad to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for.

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

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 to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are stillstanding in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mightyforests of the Sierra.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

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.

Look Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God.

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

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

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.

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.