“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

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John Muir183
Scottish-born American naturalist and author 1838–1914

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