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As Age Comes On, One Source Of Enjoyment After Another Is Closed, But Nature's Sources Never Fail. Like A Generous Host, She Offers Her Brimming Cups In Endless Variety, Served In A Grand Hall, The Sky Its Ceiling, The Mountains Its Walls, Decorated With Glorious Paintings And Enlivened With Bands Of Music Ever Playing.

-John Muir

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As Age Comes On,

John Muir

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As Age Comes On, One Source Of Enjoyment After Another Is Closed, But Nature's Sources Never Fail. Like A Generous Host, She Offers Her Brimming Cups In Endless Variety, Served In A Grand Hall, The Sky Its Ceiling, The Mountains Its Walls, Decorated With Glorious Paintings And Enlivened With Bands Of Music Ever Playing.

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Keep In View The Common Good Of The People For All Time.

To Ask Me Whether I Could Endure To Live Without Friends Is Absurd. It Is Easy Enough To Live Out Of Material Sight Of Friends, But To Live Without Human Love Is Impossible.

In The Beauty And Grandeur Of Individual Trees, And In Number And Variety Of Species, The Sierra Forests Surpass All Others

But To Gain A Perfect View, One Must Go Yet Further, Over A Curving Brow To A Slight Shelf On The Extreme Brink.

So Also There Are Tides And Floods In The Affairs Of Men, Which In Some Are Slight And May Be Kept Within Bounds, But In Others They Overmaster Everything.

In Every Walk With Nature One Receives Far More Than He Seeks.

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!

Government Protection Should Be Thrown Around Every Wild Grove And Forest On The Mountains, As It Is Around Every Private Orchard, And The Trees In Public Parks. To Say Nothing Of Their Value As Fountains Of Timber, They Are Worth Infinitely More Than All The Gardens And Parks Of Towns.

The Mountains Are Fountains Not Only Of Rivers And Fertile Soil, But Of Men.

Every Hidden Cell Is Throbbing With Music And Life, Every Fiber Thrilling Like Harp Strings.

Not Blind Opposition To Progress,but Opposition To Blind Progress.

God Cannot Save Them From Fools.

While Cares Will Drop Off Like Autumn Leaves.

Tug On Anything In Nature And You Will Find It Connected To Everything Else.

Going Into The Woods, Is Going Home

I Have Never Yet Happened Upon A Trace Of Evidence... To Show That Any One Animal Was Ever Made For Another As Much As It Was Made For Itself.

We Are Now In The Mountains And They Are In Us, Kindling Enthusiasm, Making Every Nerve Quiver, Filling Every Pore And Cell Of Us. Our Flesh-and-bone Tabernacle Seems Transparent As Glass To The Beauty About Us, As If Truly An Inseparable Part Of It, Thrilling With The Air And Trees, Streams And Rocks, In The Waves Of The Sun,-a Part Of All Nature, Neither Old Nor Young, Sick Nor Well, But Immortal.‎

There Is No Estimating The Wit And Wisdom Concealed And Latent In Our Lower Fellow Mortals Until Made Manifest By Profound Experiences; For It Is Through Suffering That Dogs As Well As Saints Are Developed And Made Perfect.

Oh, These Vast, Calm, Measureless Mountain Days, Inciting At Once To Work And Rest! Days In Whose Light Everything Seems Equally Divine, Opening A Thousand Windows To Show Us God. Nevermore, However Weary, Should One Faint By The Way Who Gains The Blessings Of One Mountain Day; Whatever His Fate, Long Life, Short Life, Stormy Or Calm, He Is Rich Forever.

Eternal Sunrise, Eternal Sunset, Eternal Dawn And Gloaming, On Seas And Continents And Islands, Each In Its Turn, As The Round Earth Rolls.

To Myself, Mountains Are The Beginning And The End Of All Natural Scenery; In Them, And In The Forms Of Inferior Landscape That Lead To Them, My Affections Are Wholly Bound Up.

I Am Often Asked If I Am Not Lonely On My Solitary Excursions. It Seems So Self-evident That One Cannot Be Lonesome Where Everything Is Wild And Beautiful And Busy And Steeped With God That The Question Is Hard To Answer.

Any Fool Can Destroy Trees, They Cannot Run Away.

I Like To Walk, Touch Living Mother Earth—bare Feet Best, And Thrill Every Step. Used To Envy Happy Reptiles That Had Advantage Of So Much Body In Contact With Earth, Bosom To Bosom. [we] Live With Our Heels As Well As Head And Most Of Our Pleasure Comes In That Way.

Nature Is Always Lovely, Invincible, Glad, Whatever Is Done And Suffered By Her Creatures. All Scars She Heals, Whether In Rocks Or Water Or Sky Or Hearts.

One Day's Exposure To Mountains Is Better Than A Cartload Of Books.

Everybody Needs Beauty As Well As Bread.

So Abundant And Novel Are The Objects Of Interest In A Pure Wilderness That Unless You Are Pursuing Special Studies It Matters Little Where You Go, Or How Often To The Same Place. Wherever You Chance To Be Always Seems At The Moment Of All Places The Best; And You Feel That There Can Be No Happiness In This World Or In Any Other For Those Who May Not Be Happy There.

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.

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.

None Of Nature's Landscapes Are Ugly So Long As They Are Wild.

I've Had A Great Time In South America And South Africa. Indeed It Now Seems That On This Pair Of Wild Hot Continents I've Enjoyed The Most Fruitful Year Of My Life.

Wander A Whole Summer If You Can. Time Will Not Be Taken From The Sum Of Life. Instead Of Shortening, It Will Definitely Lengthen It And Make You Truly Immortal.

Lizards Of Every Temper, Style, And Color Dwell Here, Seemingly As Happy And Companionable As The Birds And Squirrels.

No Dogma Taught By The Present Civilization Seems To Form So Insuperable An Obstacle In A Way Of A Right Understanding Of The Relations Which Culture Sustains As To Wilderness, As That Which Declares That The World Was Made Especially For The Uses Of Men. Every Animal, Plant, And Crystal Controverts It In The Plainest Terms. Yet It Is Taught From Century To Century As Something Ever New And Precious, And In The Resulting Darkness The Enormous Conceit Is Allowed To Go Unchallenged.

The Axe And Saw Are Insanely Busy, Chips Are Flying Thick As Snowflakes, And Every Summer Thousands Of Acres Of Priceless Forests, With Their Underbrush, Soil, Springs, Climate, Scenery, And Religion, Are Vanishing Away In Clouds Of Smoke, While, Except In The National Parks, Not One Forest Guard Is Employed.

Heaven Knows That John The Baptist Was Not More Eager To Get All His Fellow Sinners Into The Jordan Than I To Baptize All Of Mine In The Beauty Of God's Mountains.

The Body Seems To Feel Beauty When Exposed To It As It Feels The Campfire Or Sunshine, Entering Not By The Eyes Alone, But Equally Through All One's Flesh Like Radiant Heat, Making A Passionate Ecstatic Pleasure Glow Not Explainable.

Spring Work Is Going On With Joyful Enthusiasm.

If The Creator Were To Bestow A New Set Of Senses Upon Us, Or Slightly Remodel The Present Ones, Leaving All The Rest Of Nature Unchanged, We Should Never Doubt We Were In Another World, And So In Strict Reality We Should Be, Just As If All The World Besides Our Senses Were Changed.

The Substance Of The Winds Is Too Thin For Human Eyes, Their Written Language Is Too Difficult For Human Minds, And Their Spoken Language Mostly Too Faint For The Ears.

[concerning The Water Ouzel, Now Called American Dipper:] In A General Way His Music Is That Of The Streams Refined And Spiritualized. The Deep Booming Notes Of The Falls Are In It, The Trills Of Rapids, The Gurgling Of Margin Eddies, The Low Whispering Of Level Reaches, And The Sweet Tinkle Of Separate Drops Oozing From The Ends Of Mosses And Falling Into Tranquil Pools.

Large Flocks Of Butterflies, All Kinds Of Happy Insects, Seem To Be In A Perfect Fever Of Joy And Sportive Gladness.

No Wonder The Hills And Groves Were God's First Temples, And The More They Are Cut Down And Hewn Into Cathedrals And Churches, The Farther Off And Dimmer Seems The Lord Himself.

Between Every Two Pine Trees There Is A Door Leading To A New Way Of Life.

I Have A Low Opinion Of Books; They Are But Piles Of Stones Set Up To Show Coming Travelers Where Other Minds Have Been, Or At Best Signal Smokes To Call Attention. No Amount Of Word-making Will Ever Make A Single Soul To Know These Mountains. As Well Seek To Warm The Naked And Frostbitten By Lectures On Caloric And Pictures Of Flame. One Day's Exposure To Mountains Is Better Than Cartloads Of Books.

If I Should Be Fated To Walk No More With Nature, Be Compelled To Leave All I Most Devoutly Love In The Wilderness, Return To Civilization And Be Twisted Into The Characterless Cable Of Society, Then These Sweet, Free, Cumberless Rovings Will Be As Chinks And Slits On Life's Horizon, Through Which I May Obtain Glimpses Of The Treasures That Lie In God's Wilds Beyond My Reach.

Wherever We Go In The Mountains, We Find More Than We Seek.

I Must Return To The Mountains-to Yosemite. I Am Told That The Winter Storms There Will Not Be Easily Borne, But I Am Bewitched, Enchanted, And Tomorrow I Must Start For The Great Temple To Listen To The Winter Songs And Sermons Preached And Sung Only There.

Most People Are On The World, Not In It.

Another Glorious Day, The Air As Delicious To The Lungs As Nectar To The Tongue.

As Long As I Live, I'll Hear Waterfalls And Birds And Winds Sing.

We Are In The Mountains And They Are In Us, Kindling Enthusiasm, Making Every Nerve Quiver, Filling Every Pore And Cell Of Us....how Glorious A Conversion, So Complete And Wholesome It Is, Scarce Memory Enough Of Old Bondage Days Left As A Standpoint To View It From! In This Newness Of Life We Seem To Have Been So Always

Wildness Was Ever Sounding In Our Ears, And Nature Saw To It That Besides School Lessons Some Of Her Own Lessons Should Be Learned, Perhaps With A View To The Time When We Should Be Called To Wander In Wildness To Our Heart’s Content.

By Forces Seemingly Antagonistic And Destructive Nature Accomplishes Her Beneficent Designs - Now A Flood Of Fire, Now A Flood Of Ice, Now A Flood Of Water; And Again In The Fullness Of Time An Outburst Of Organic Life.

In God's Wildness Lies The Hope Of The World.

Indians Walk Softly And Hurt The Landscape Hardly More Than The Birds And Squirrels, And Their Brush And Bark Huts Last Hardly Longer Than Those Of Wood Rats, While Their More Enduring Monuments, Excepting Those Wrought On The Forests By The Fires They Made To Improve Their Hunting Grounds, Vanish In A Few Centuries.

Our Lives Are Rounded With A Sleep.

Happy Will Be The Men Who, Having The Power And The Love And The Benevolent Forecast To [create A Park], Will Do It. They Will Not Be Forgotten. The Trees And Their Lovers Will Sing Their Praises, And Generations Yet Unborn Will Rise Up And Call Them Blessed.

I’d Rather Be In The Mountains Thinking Of God, Than In Church Thinking About The Mountains.

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.

Divine Love Is The Sublime Boss Of The Universe.

I Have Enjoyed The Trees And Scenery Of Kentucky Exceedingly. How Shall I Ever Tell Of The Miles And Miles Of Beauty That Have Been Flowing Into Me In Such Measure? These Lofty Curving Ranks Of Lobing, Swelling Hills, These Concealed Valleys Of Fathomless Verdure, And These Lordly Trees With The Nursing Sunlight Glancing In Their Leaves Upon The Outlines Of The Magnificent Masses Of Shade Embosomed Among Their Wide Branches-these Are Cut Into My Memory To Go With Me Forever.

In Drying Plants, Botanists Often Dry Themselves. Dry Words And Dry Facts Will Not Fire Hearts.

Man Is Always And Everywhere A Blight On The Landscape.

Walk Away Quietly In Any Direction And Taste The Freedom Of The Mountaineer. Camp Out Among The Grasses And Gentians Of Glacial Meadows, In Craggy Garden Nooks Full Of Nature's Darlings.

Strange The Faithless Fuss Made About Taking A Walk In The Safest And Pleasantest Of All Places, A Wilderness.

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.

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.

These Beautiful Days ... Do Not Exist As Mere Pictures - Maps Hung Upon The Walls Of Memory To Brighten At Times When Touched By Association Or Will ... They Saturate Themselves Into Every Part Of The Body And Live Always.

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.

Most People Are On The World, Not In It-- Having No Conscious Sympathy Or Relationship To Anything About Them-- Undiffused Seporate, And Rigidly Alone Like Marbles Of Polished Stone, Touching But Seporate.

To The Sane And Free It Will Hardly Seem Necessary To Cross The Continent In Search Of Wild Beauty, However Easy The Way, For They Find It In Abundance Wherever They Chance To Be.

Society Doesn't Need That Everybody Is Behaving In The Full Normal Way... Like People In A Buddhist Monastery... But Eccentricity May Also Connect With The Irrational.

When We Try To Pick Out Anything By Itself, We Find It Hitched To Everything Else In The Universe. One Fancies A Heart Like Our Own Must Be Beating In Every Crystal And Cell, And We Feel Like Stopping To Speak To The Plants And Animals As Friendly Fellow-mountaineers. Nature As A Poet, An Enthusiastic Workingman, Becomes More And More Visible The Farther And Higher We Go.

Nature Has Always Something Rare To Show Us... And The Danger To Life And Limb Is Hardly Greater Than One Would Experience Crouching Deprecatingly Beneath A Roof.

How Hard To Realize That Every Camp Of Men Or Beast Has This Glorious Starry Firmament For A Roof! In Such Places Standing Alone On The Mountain-top It Is Easy To Realize That Whatever Special Nests We Make - Leaves And Moss Like The Marmots And Birds, Or Tents Or Piled Stone - We All Dwell In A House Of One Room - The World With The Firmament For Its Roof - And Are Sailing The Celestial Spaces Without Leaving Any Track.

Going To The Woods Is Going Home, For I Suppose We Came From The Woods Originally.

Few Are Altogether Deaf To The Preaching Of Pine Trees. Their Sermons On The Mountains Go To Our Hearts . . .

Any Glimpse Into The Life Of An Animal Quickens Our Own And Makes It So Much The Larger And Better In Every Way." ... "surely A Better Time Must Be Drawing Nigh When Godlike Human Beings Will Become Truly Humane, And Learn To Put Their Animal Fellow Mortals In Their Hearts Instead Of On Their Backs Or In Their Dinners.

One Can Make A Day Of Any Size And Regulate The Rising And Setting Of His Own Sun And The Brightness Of Its Shining.

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.

To The Lover Of Pure Wildness Alaska Is One Of The Most Wonderful Countries In The World.

When A Man Plants A Tree, He Plants Himself.

The Battle For Conservation Will Go On Endlessly. It Is Part Of The Universal Battle Between Right And Wrong.

Climb The Mountains And Get Their Good Tidings.

Wilderness Is A Necessity ... They Will See What I Meant In Time. There Must Be Places For Human Beings To Satisfy Their Souls. Food And Drink Is Not All. There Is The Spiritual. In Some It Is Only A Germ, Of Course, But The Germ Will Grow.

Surely All God's People, However Serious Or Savage, Great Or Small, Like To Play.

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 Alpenglow, To Me The Most Impressive Of All The Terrestrial Manifestations Of God. 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.

God Has To Nearly Kill Us Sometimes, To Teach Us Lessons.

When We Try To Pick Out Anything By Itself We Find It Hitched To Everything Else In The Universe ... The Whole Wilderness Is Unity And Interrelation, Is Alive And Familiar, Full Of Humanity. The Very Stones Seem Talkative, Sympathetic, Brotherly.

This 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 And Continents And Islands, Each In Its Turn, As The Round Earth Rolls.

How Many Hearts With Warm, Red Blood In Them Are Beating Under Cover Of The Woods, And How Many Teeth And Eyes Are Shining? A Multitude Of Animal People, Intimately Related To Us, But Of Whose Lives We Know Almost Nothing, Are As Busy About Their Own Affairs As We Are About Ours.

How Glorious A Greeting The Sun Gives The Mountains! To Behold This Alone Is Worth The Pains Of Any Excursion A Thousand Times Over. The Highest Peaks Burned Like Islands In A Sea Of Liquid Shade. Then The Lower Peaks And Spires Caught The Glow, And Long Lances Of Light, Streaming Through Many A Notch And Pass, Fell Thick On The Frozen Meadows.

Few Are Altogether Deaf To The Preaching Of Pine Trees. Their Sermons On The Mountains Go To Our Hearts; And If People In General Could Be Got Into The Woods, Even For Once, To Hear The Trees Speak For Themselves, All Difficulties In The Way Of Forest Preservation Would Vanish.

The Forests Of America, However Slighted By Man, Must Have Been A Great Delight To God; For They Were The Best He Ever Planted.

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

When I First Caught Sight Of (mount Shasta) Over The Braided Folds Of The Sacramento Valley I Was Fifty Miles Away And Afoot, Alone And Weary. Yet All My Blood Turned To Wine, And I Have Not Been Weary Since.

The Sun Shines Not On Us But In Us.

No Synonym For God Is So Perfect As Beauty.

There Is Not A Fragment In All Nature, For Every Relative Fragment Of One Thing Is A Full Harmonious Unit In Itself.

As Age Comes On, One Source Of Enjoyment After Another Is Closed, But Nature's Sources Never Fail. Like A Generous Host, She Offers Her Brimming Cups In Endless Variety, Served In A Grand Hall, The Sky Its Ceiling, The Mountains Its Walls, Decorated With Glorious Paintings And Enlivened With Bands Of Music Ever Playing.

We All Flow From One Fountain- Soul. All Are Expressions Of One Love. God Does Not Appear, And Flow Out, Only From Narrow Chinks And Round Bored Wells Here And There In Favored Races And Places, But He Flows In Grand Undivided Currents, Shoreless And Boundless Over Creeds And Forms And All Kinds Of Civilizations And Peoples And Beasts, Saturating All And Fountainizing All.

How Lavish Is Nature Building, Pulling Down, Creating, Destroying, Chasing Every Material Particle From Form To Form, Ever Changing, Ever Beautiful.

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 With Everything In Place

Hidden In The Glorious Wildness Like Unmined Gold.

When One Tugs At A Single Thing In Nature, He Finds It Attached To The Rest Of The World.

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

In Studying The Fate Of Our Forest King, We Have Thus Far Considered The Action Of Purely Natural Causes Only; But, Unfortunately, Man Is In The Woods, And Waste And Pure Destruction Are Making Rapid Headway. If The Importance Of The Forests Were Even Vaguely Understood, Even From An Economic Standpoint, Their Preservation Would Call Forth The Most Watchful Attention Of Government

Look! Nature Is Overflowing With The Grandeur Of God!

You Know That I Have Not Lagged Behind In The Work Of Exploring Our Grand Wilderness, And In Calling Everybody To Come And Enjoy The Thousand Blessings They Have To Offer.

Wander Here A Whole Summer, If You Can ... Thousands Of Wild Blessings Will Search You And Soak You As If You Were A Sponge, And The Big Days Will Go By Uncounted

In This Silent, Serene Wilderness The Weary Can Gain A Heart-bath In Perfect Peace.

Yosemite Park Is A Place Of Rest, A Refuge From The Roar And Dust And Weary, Nervous, Wasting Work Of The Lowlands, In Which One Gains The Advantages Of Both Solitude And Society.

The Clearest Way Into The Universe Is Through A Forest Wilderness.

Any Glimpse Into The Life Of An Animal Quickens Our Own And Makes It So Much The Larger And Better In Every Way.

Walk Away Quietly In Any Direction And Taste The Freedom Of The Mountaineer.

Wilderness Is Not Only A Haven For Native Plants And Animals But It Is Also A Refuge From Society. Its A Place To Go To Hear The Wind And Little Else, See The Stars And The Galaxies, Smell The Pine Trees, Feel The Cold Water, Touch The Sky And The Ground At The Same Time, Listen To Coyotes, Eat The Fresh Snow, Walk Across The Desert Sands, And Realize Why Its Good To Go Outside Of The City And The Suburbs. Fortunately, There Is Wilderness Just Outside The Limits Of The Cities And The Suburbs In Most Of The United States, Especially In The West.

I Will Follow My Instincts, Be Myself For Good Or Ill, And See What Will Be The Upshot.

In The Woods Is Perpetual Youth.

It May Not Be Easy, Life Isn't Easy, But Dreams Keep You Alive.

All Wilderness Seems To Be Full Of Tricks And Plans To Drive And Draw Us Up Into God's Light.

Go Quietly Alone, No Harm Will Befall You.

The World Is Big And I Want To Have A Good Look At It Before It Gets Dark.

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.

It Is A Vast Wilderness Of Rocks In A Sea Of Light, Colored And Glowing Like Oak And Maple In Autumn, When The Sun Gold Is Richest

The Finest Of The Glacier Meadow Gardens Lie ...imbedded In The Upper Pine Forests Like Lakes Of Light.

Every Atom In Creation May Be Said To Be Acquainted With And Married To Every Other, But With Universal Union There Is A Division Sufficient In Degree For The Purposes Of The Most Intense Individuality.

No Temple Made With Hands Can Compare With Yosemite.

Some People Miss Flesh As A Drunkard Misses His Dram.

...good Luck And Good Work For The Happy Mountain Raindrops, Each One Of Them A High Waterfall In Itself, Descending From The Cliffs And Hollows Of The Clouds To The Cliffs And Hollows Of The Rocks, Out Of The Sky-thunder Into The Thunder Of The Falling Rivers.

Hiking - I Don't Like Either The Word Or The Thing. People Ought To Saunter In The Mountains - Not Hike! Do You Know The Origin Of That Word 'saunter?' It's A Beautiful Word. Away Back In The Middle Ages People Used To Go On Pilgrimages To The Holy Land, And When People In The Villages Through Which They Passed Asked Where They Were Going, They Would Reply, "a La Sainte Terre,' 'to The Holy Land.' And So They Became Known As Sainte-terre-ers Or Saunterers. Now These Mountains Are Our Holy Land, And We Ought To Saunter Through Them Reverently, Not 'hike' Through Them."

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.

Plants, Animals, And Stars Are All Kept In Place, Bridled Along Appointed Ways, With One Another, And Through The Midst Of One Another -- Killing And Being Killed, Eating And Being Eaten, In Harmonious Proportions And Quantities.

Nature In Her Green, Tranquil Woods Heals And Soothes All Afflictions.

Tell Me What You Will Of The Benefactions Of City Civilization, Of The Sweet Security Of Streets-all As Part Of The Natural Upgrowth Of Man Towards The High Destiny We Hear So Much Of. I Know That Our Bodies Were Made To Thrive Only In Pure Air, And The Scenes In Which Pure Air Is Found. If The Death Exhalations That Brood The Broad Towns In Which We So Fondly Compact Ourselves Were Made Visible, We Should Flee As From A Plague. All Are More Or Less Sick; There Is Not A Perfectly Sane Man In San Francisco.

One Should Go To The Woods For Safety, If For Nothing Else.

Writing Is Like The Life Of A Glacier; One Eternal Grind.

I Only Went Out For A Walk And Finally Concluded To Stay Out Till Sundown, For Going Out, I Found, Was Really Going In.

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.

Although I Was Four Years At The University [of Wisconsin], I Did Not Take The Regular Course Of Studies, But Instead Picked Out What I Thought Would Be Most Useful To Me, Particularly Chemistry, Which Opened A New World, Mathematics And Physics, A Little Greek And Latin, Botany And And Geology. I Was Far From Satisfied With What I Had Learned, And Should Have Stayed Longer.

It Is Always Interesting To See People In Dead Earnest, From Whatever Cause, And Earthquakes Make Everybody Earnest.

All The World Was Before Me And Every Day Was A Holiday, So It Did Not Seem Important To Which One Of The World's Wildernesses I First Should Wander.

Nothing Truly Wild Is Unclean.

…their Eager, Childlike Attention Was Refreshing To See As Compared With The Decent, Deathlike Apathy Of Weary Civilized People, In Whom Natural Curiosity Has Been Quenched In Toil And Care And Poor, Shallow Comfort.

Wander A Whole Summer If You Can. Thousands Of God's Blessings Will Search You And Soak You As If You Were A Sponge, And The Big Days Will Go By Uncounted. If You Are Business-tangled And So Burdened By Duty That Only Weeks Can Be Got Out Of The Heavy Laden Year, Give A Month At Least. The Time Will Not Be Taken From The Sum Of Life. Instead Of Shortening, It Will Indefinitely Lengthen It And Make You Truly Immortal.

Who Reports The Works And Ways Of The Clouds, Those Wondrous Creations Coming Into Being Every Day Like Freshly Upheaved Mountains?

A Man, In His Books, May Be Said To Walk The Earth A Long Time After He Is Gone.

Fresh Beauty Opens One's Eyes Wherever It Is Really Seen, But The Very Abundance And Completeness Of The Common Beauty That Besets Our Steps Prevents Its Being Absorbed And Appreciated. It Is A Good Thing, Therefore, To Make Short Excursions Now And Then To The Bottom Of The Sea Among Dulse And Coral, Or Up Among The Clouds On Mountain-tops, Or In Balloons, Or Even To Creep Like Worms Into Dark Holes And Caverns Underground, Not Only To Learn Something Of What Is Going On In Those Out-of-the-way Places, But To See Better What The Sun Sees On Our Return To Common Every-day Beauty.

The Mountains Are Calling And I Must Go.

I Have Precious Little Sympathy For The Selfish Propriety Of Civilized Man, And If Aware Of Races Should Occur Between The Wild Beasts And Lord Man, I Would Be Tempted To Sympathise With The Bears.

Rivers Flow Not Past, But Through Us; Tingling, Vibrating, Exciting Every Cell And Fiber In Our Bodies, Making Them Sing And Glide.

All Nature's Wildness Tells The Same Story: The Shocks And Outbursts Of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Geysers, Roaring, Thundering Waves And Floods, The Silent Uprush Of Sap In Plants, Storms Of Every Sort, Each And All, Are The Orderly, Beauty-making Love-beats Of Nature's Heart.

Living Artificially In Towns, We Are Sickly, And Never Come To Know Ourselves.

Surely All God's People, However Serious Or Savage, Great Or Small, Like To Play. Whales And Elephants, Dancing, Humming Gnats, And Invisibly Small Mischievous Microbes- All Are Warm With Divine Radium And Must Have Lots Of Fun In Them.

The Most Distinctive, And Perhaps The Most Impressive, Characteristic Of American Scenery Is Its Wilderness.

Characteristics

Hiking. I Don't Like Either The Word Or The Thing. People Ought To Saunter In The Mountains...the Se Mountains Are Our Holy Land, And We Ought To Saunter Through Them Reverently, Not 'hike' Through Them.

There Are No Accidents In Nature.

Earth Has No Sorrow That Earth Can Not Heal.

The Radiance In Some Places Is So Great As To Be Fairly Dazzling... Every Crystal, Every Flower A Window Opening Into Heaven, A Mirror Reflecting The Creator.

One Is Constantly Reminded Of The Infinite Lavishness And Fertility Of Nature-inexhaustible Abundance Amid What Seems Enormous Waste. And Yet When We Look Into Any Of Her Operations That Lie Within Reach Of Our Minds, We Learn That No Particle Of Her Material Is Wasted Or Worn Out. It Is Eternally Flowing From Use To Use, Beauty To Yet Higher Beauty; And We Soon Cease To Lament Waste And Death, And Rather Rejoice And Exult In The Imperishable, Unspendable Wealth Of The Universe.

Every Good Thing Great And Small Needs Defense

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.

Word Lessons, In Particular The Wouldst Couldst Shouldst Have Loved Kind, Were Kept Up, With Much Warlike Thrashing, Until I Had Committed The Whole Of French, Latin, And English Grammars To Memory.

English Grammar

In The Eternal Youth Of Nature, You May Renew Your Own.

I Am Hopelessly And Forever A Mountaineer.

A Little Pure Wildness Is The One Great Present Want, Both Of Men And Sheep.

Nature As A Poet, An Enthusiastic Workingman, Becomes More And More Visible The Farther And Higher We Go; For The Mountains Are Fountains – Beginning Places, However Related To Sources Beyond Mortal Ken.

Only Spread A Fern-frond Over A Man's Head And Worldly Cares Are Cast Out, And Freedom And Beauty And Peace Come In.

We All Flow From One Fountain- Soul. All Are Expressions Of One Love.

To Sit In Solitude, To Think In Solitude With Only The Music Of The Stream And The Cedar To Break The Flow Of Silence, There Lies The Value Of Wilderness.

Between Every Two Pines Is A Doorway To A New World.

Going To The Mountains Is Going Home.

I Wish I Knew Where I Was Going. Doomed To Be Carried Of The Spirit Into The Wilderness, I Suppose. I Wish I Could Be More Moderate In My Desires, But I Cannot, And So There Is No Rest.

I Used To Envy The Father Of Our Race, Dwelling As He Did In Contact With The New-made Fields And Plants Of Eden; But I Do So No More, Because I Have Discovered That I Also Live In "creation's Dawn." The Morning Stars Still Sing Together, And The World, Not Yet Half Made, Becomes More Beautiful Every Day.

When I Discovered A New Plant, I Sat Down Beside It For A Minute Or A Day, To Make Its Acquaintance And Hear What It Had To Tell... I Asked The Boulders I Met, Whence They Came And Whither They Were Going.

Society Speaks And All Men Listen, Mountains Speak And Wise Men Listen

Never While Anything Is Left Of Me Shall This... Camp Be Forgotten. It Has Fairly Grown Into Me, Not Merely As Memory Pictures, But As Part And Parcel Of Mind And Body Alike.

The Tide Of Visitors Will Float Slowly About The Bottom Of The Valley As Harmless Scum Collecting In Hotel And Saloon Eddies, Leaving The Rocks And Falls Eloquent As Ever.

I Have Seen Oaks Of Many Species In Many Kinds Of Exposure And Soil, But Those Of Kentucky Excel In Grandeur All I Had Ever Before Beheld. They Are Broad And Dense And Bright Green. In The Leafy Bowers And Caves Of Their Long Branches Dwell Magnificent Avenues Of Shade, And Every Tree Seems To Be Blessed With A Double Portion Of Strong Exulting Life.

It Took More Than Three Thousand Years To Make Some Of The Trees In These Western Woods ... Through All The Wonderful, Eventful Centuries Since Christ's Time-and Long Before That-god Has Cared For These Trees, Saved Them From Drought, Disease, Avalanches, And A Thousand Straining, Leveling Tempests And Floods; But He Cannot Save Them From Fools.

We Live With Our Heels As Well As Head And Most Of Our Pleasure Comes In That Way.

I Might Have Become A Millionaire, But I Chose To Become A Tramp.

In Every Country The Mountains Are Fountains, Not Only Of Rivers But Of Men. Therefore We All Are Born Mountaineers, The Offspring Of Rock And Sunshine.

Handle A Book As A Bee Does A Flower, Extract Its Sweetness But Do Not Damage It.

Come To The Woods, For Here Is Rest.

I Wandered Away On A Glorious Botanical And Geological Excursion, Which Has Lasted Nearly Fifty Years And Is Not Yet Completed, Always Happy And Free, Poor And Rich, Without Thought Of A Diploma Or Of Making A Name, Urged On And On Through Endless, Inspiring Godful Beauty.

The Big Tree Is Nature's Forest Masterpiece, And So Far As I Know, The Greatest Of Living Things.

Come To The Woods, For Here Is Rest. There Is No Repose Like That Of The Green Deep Woods.

Listen To Them! How Wholly Infused With God Is This One Big Word Of Love That We Call The World!

I Am Well Again, I Came To Life In The Cool Winds And Crystal Waters Of The Mountains.

Few In These Hot, Dim, Strenuous Times Are Quite Sane Or Free; Choked With Care Like Clocks Full Of Dust, Laboriously Doing So Much Good And Making So Much Money - Or So Little, They Are No Longer Good For Themselves.

One Day's Exposure To Mountains Is Better Than Cartloads Of Books. See How Willingly Nature Poses Herself Upon Photographers' Plates. No Earthly Chemicals Are So Sensitive As Those Of The Human Soul.

All The Wild World Is Beautiful, And It Matters But Little Where We Go, To Highlands Or Lowlands, Woods Or Plains, On The Sea Or Land Or Down Among The Crystals Of Waves Or High In A Balloon In The Sky; Through All The Climates, Hot Or Cold, Storms And Calms, Everywhere And Always We Are In God's Eternal Beauty And Love. So Universally True Is This, The Spot Where We Chance To Be Always Seems The Best.

C. Albus...i Think The Very Loveliest Of All The Lily Family - A Spotless Soul, Plant Saint, That Every One Must Love And So Be Made Better. It Puts The Wildest Mountaineer On His Good Behavior. With This Plant The Whole World Would Seem Rich Though Non Other Existed.

The Water In Music The Oar Forsakes. The Air In Music The Wing Forsakes. All Things In Move In Music And Write It. The Mouse, Lizard, And Grasshopper Sing Together On The Turlock Sands, Sing With The Morning Stars.

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!

A Lifetime Is So Little A Time That We Die Before We Get Ready To Live. I Should Like To Study At A College, But Then I Have To Say To Myself: "you Will Die Before You Can Do Anything Else".

See How God Writes History. No Technical Knowledge Is Required; Only A Calm Day And A Calm Mind.

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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!

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