John Muir: Trending quotes (page 4)

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

John Muir

Mountain

“Wander a whole summer if you can… time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.”

John Muir

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West 
Context: Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild 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 to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.

Life , Time , Summer

“That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits.”

John Muir

" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86)
1890s

Star

“I did find Calypso hotdog — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy.”

John Muir

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (1866); published as "The Calypso Borealis, Botanical Enthusiasm" in Boston Recorder, 21 December 1866; republished in Bonnie Johanna Gisel, Kindred & Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (2001), page 41
Muir's first published writing, concerning the orchid Calypso http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CABU.
1860s

Love , Joy

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

John Muir

statement by Muir as remembered by Samuel Hall Young in Alaska Days with John Muir (1915), chapter 7
1910s

Mountain , Nature , Heart

“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.”

John Muir

pages 271-284 (at pages 282-283)
1890s, The National Parks and Forest Reservations, 1895

People , Way , Mountain , Tree

“[Concerning an aurora, "vivid crimson … indescribably rich and deep":] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.”

John Muir

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 9: The Discovery of Glacier Bay
1910s

God , Mountain , Light

“The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted.”

John Muir

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

God

“Take a course of 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

"Mount Shasta" in Picturesque California (1888-1890) page 165; reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 5
1880s

Youth , Nature , Water

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

John Muir

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West

Mountain

“Pollution, defilement, squalor are words that never would have been created had man lived conformably to Nature. Birds, insects, bears die as cleanly and are disposed of as beautifully as flies. The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living…. How beautiful is all Death!”

John Muir

August or September 1875, page 222
John of the Mountains, 1938

Death , Beauty , Nature , Bird

“[Concerning the founding of the Sierra Club] Hoping that we will be able to do something for wildness and make the mountains glad.”

John Muir

letter to Henry Senger http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirletters/id/14187/show/14186 (22 May 1892)
1890s

Hope , Mountain

“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.”

John Muir

"From Fort Independence to Yosemite", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 6 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated September 1875, published 15 September 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 113
1870s

Men , Mountain , Country

“The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar … the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. … No particle is ever wasted or worn out but eternally flowing from use to use.”

John Muir

attributed to a Muir "manuscript" in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 124
Similar to statements from My First Summer in the Sierra http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/my_first_summer_in_the_sierra/, see quotes from 30 August and 2 September above.
1870s

“My fire was in all its glory about midnight, and, having made a bark shed to shelter me from the rain and partially dry my clothing, I had nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers.”

John Muir

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 2: Alexander Archipelago and the Home I Found in Alaska
1910s

Tree , Clothes

“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.”

John Muir

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West

Beauty , Way , Search , Chance

“[Concerning the Sugar Pine] The wood is deliciously fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams.”

John Muir

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 8: The Forests

“I ran home [from Cloud's Rest to Yosemite Valley] in the moonlight, with long, firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. Down through the junipers — down through the firs; now in jet-shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rock; past the huge ghost of South Dome, rising weird through the firs — past glorious Nevada — past the groves of Illilouette — through the pines of the valley; frost-crystals flashing all the sky beneath, as star-crystals on all the sky above. All of this mountain-bread for one day!”

John Muir

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (December 1872); published as " A Geologist's Winter Walk http://books.google.com/books?id=OAEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA355", Overland Monthly, volume 10, number 4 (April 1873) pages 355-358 (at page 358); modified slightly and reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 2
1870s

Love , Home , Mountain , Star

“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.”

John Muir

"Mount Shasta" in Picturesque California (1888-1890) page 148; reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 3
1880s

Life , Nature , Water , Time

“I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.”

John Muir

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (7 October 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents
1870s

Mountain