Top 100 John Burroughs Quotes
#1. Oh, Spring is surely coming, Her couriers fill the air; Each morn are new arrivals, Each night her ways prepare; I scent her fragrant garments, Her foot is on the stair.
John Burroughs
#2. Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.
John Burroughs
#3. It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative
John Burroughs
#4. 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!
John Burroughs
#5. The fuel in the earth will be exhausted in a thousand or more years, and its mineral wealth, but man will find substitutes for these in the winds, the waves, the sun's heat, and so forth.
John Burroughs
#6. Mine own people do not care for me, John Carter; I am too unlike them. It is a sad fate, since I must live my life amongst them.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#7. O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best ...
John Burroughs
#8. A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
John Burroughs
#9. 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.
John Burroughs
#10. For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.
John Burroughs
#11. 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.
John Burroughs
#12. Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
John Burroughs
#13. I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather.
John Burroughs
#14. One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking
John Burroughs
#15. 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.
John Burroughs
#16. The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.
John Burroughs
#17. Nature we have always with us, an in exhaustible store-house of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind and fires the imagination -- health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul.
John Burroughs
#19. The deeper our insight into the methods of nature ... the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.
John Burroughs
#20. Love sharpens the eye, the ear, the touch; it quickens the feet, it steadies the hand, it arms against the wet and the cold.
What we love to do, that we do well.
To know is not all; it is only half.
To love is the other half
John Burroughs
#21. Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.
John Burroughs
#22. You can fail many times, but you're not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
#23. That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.
John Burroughs
#24. Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.
John Burroughs
#25. Lives there upon any world such another as John Carter, Prince of Helium? Lives there another man who could fight his way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing savage beasts and hordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#26. A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
#27. A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too.
William S. Burroughs
#28. Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.
John Burroughs
#29. 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.
John Burroughs
#30. If your vocation be shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets no greater fighter has ever lived than John Carter, Prince of Helium.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#31. Look up at the miracle of the falling snow, - the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.
John Burroughs
#32. I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the tree-tops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men.
John Burroughs
#33. [T]he cold warms me - after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.
John Burroughs
#34. The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
John Burroughs
#35. The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.
John Burroughs
#37. If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature ...
John Burroughs
#38. Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
John Burroughs
#39. Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.
John Burroughs
#40. The most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of you has the whole wealth of the universe at your very door. All that I ever had, and still have, may be yours by stretching forth your hand and taking it.
John Burroughs
#41. Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
John Burroughs
#42. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
John Burroughs
#43. Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived and fought for Dejah Thoris and her people, and for ten I have lived upon her memory.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#44. One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
John Burroughs
#45. Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
John Burroughs
#46. It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.
John Burroughs
#47. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding.
John Burroughs
#48. Success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.
John Burroughs
#49. Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.
John Burroughs
#50. Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
John Burroughs
#51. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
John Burroughs
#53. If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
John Burroughs
#54. You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying.
John Burroughs
#55. 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.
John Burroughs
#56. As much as I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge myself, and just now I had more weighty matters to occupy my time than spilling the blood of strange warriors.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#57. Literature is an investment of genius which has dividends to all subsequent times
John Burroughs
#58. Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
John Burroughs
#59. The kingdom of heaven in not a place but a state of mind.
John Burroughs
#60. One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand-to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.
John Burroughs
#61. 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.
John Burroughs
#62. Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover - to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and with no mercenary ends, accepts all.
John Burroughs
#63. Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.
John Burroughs
#64. The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
John Burroughs
#65. If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.
John Burroughs
#66. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
#67. When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.
John Burroughs
#68. Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.
John Burroughs
#69. How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
John Burroughs
#70. I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
John Burroughs
#71. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs
#73. 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.
John Burroughs
#75. The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.
John Burroughs
#76. The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.
John Burroughs
#77. A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
John Burroughs
#78. I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
John Burroughs
#80. I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of my family tree.
John Burroughs
#81. We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.
John Burroughs
#82. Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.
John Burroughs
#83. 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.
John Burroughs
#84. 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.
John Burroughs
#85. The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
John Burroughs
#86. The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
John Burroughs
#87. One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: 'To rise above little things'.
John Burroughs
#88. How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!
John Burroughs
#89. The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology.
John Burroughs
#90. To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.
John Burroughs
#91. One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds.
John Burroughs
#92. Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.
John Burroughs
#93. The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or crook.
John Burroughs
#95. The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.
John Burroughs
#96. Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.
John Burroughs
#97. There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
John Burroughs
#98. The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon
the beauty and the wonder of the world.
John Burroughs
#99. Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.
John Burroughs
#100. One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them ... It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests.
John Burroughs
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