Best 163 quotes of John Burroughs on MyQuotes

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.

Basically [United States and France] said "We will use nuclear weapons whenever it suits our purposes to do so." So this expansion of doctrines regarding possible use of nuclear weapons makes them more, you know, sort of, salient and important and so it's increasing the perceived political value of nuclear weapons and therefore causing or contributing to possible proliferation.

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

Certainly in the United States, you have a constituency in the form of the weapons laboratories, and you also have the branches of the armed services that are involved with nuclear weapons deployment, especially the naval submarine operations and also the air force's land-based ICBM operations. So they have a big lobby in Washington.

Close scrutiny of an object in nature will nearly always yield some significant fact.

Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night.

Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.

Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics in Nature's church; all are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do not have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, in catacombs, in garbled texts, in miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of today; it is now and here; it is everywhere.

Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Blessed is the person who has some congenial work, some occupation in which to place one's heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces that are in him or her.

Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.

Following World War II, the U.S. was the architect of the UN system, and the world financial system, and the Human Rights Declaration, and of course the United Nations is based here in New York City. But, unfortunately, especially in the last decade, the U.S. really has been turning its back on international agreements and the set of agencies and procedures that they create as a means for governing the world.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring!

Here's how the court put it, and all judges agreed to this. The court said: "There exists and obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations under nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate.

How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!

I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round.

I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly.

I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.

I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of my family tree.

I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.

If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

If you think you can do it, you can.

If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.

I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.

In 2002 the [George] Bush administration effectively put an end to negotiations of an agreement which would have established inspection procedures to ensure or to monitor compliance with the existing legal ban on biological weapons.

In fact, the United States is building up its trident nuclear sub fleet in the Pacific, based at Bangor, Washington to build up its capabilities to wage nuclear war.

In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.

In the printed page the only real things are the paper and the ink; the white spaces play the same part in aiding the eye to take in the meaning of the print as do the black letters.

[Invading Iraq] is not the best way to make a safer world in which the United States would be a responsible partner, but it also goes against the role of law in the United States.

In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.

In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber.

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

I still find each day too short.