John Muir Quotes

John Muir Biography
Type: Environmentalist
Nationality: American
Born: April 21, 1838
Died: December 24, 1914


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.
John Muir

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
John Muir

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.
John Muir

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.
John Muir

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
John Muir

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.
John Muir

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir

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.
John Muir

One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
John Muir

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.
John Muir

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

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

The mountains are calling and I must go.
John Muir

The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir

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

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

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!
John Muir

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