Top 100 Muir Quotes
#1. I've always liked Muir without knowing quite why.
Douglas Dunn
#2. John Muir, Earth - planet, Universe
[Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]
John Muir
#3. The redwoods you can see in Muir Woods are nothing like the redwood titans that stand in the rainforest valleys of the North Coast, closer to Oregon. These are the dreadnoughts of trees, the blue whales of the plant kingdom.
Richard Preston
#4. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; 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 to Samuel Hall Young]
Samuel Hall Young
#5. I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards.
Galen Rowell
#6. I never wanted to go to university: books seemed to have all the answers, and the questions, too. I went to work for Jean Muir as her in-house model. Miss Muir - as she will always be to me - was interested in everything.
Joanna Lumley
#7. John Muir, the famous naturalist, wrote in his journal that you should never go to Alaska as a young man because you'll never be satisfied with any other place as long as you live. And there's a lot of truth to that.
Tom Bodett
#8. An' C is for claymore . . . and crivens, I'll gi'e ye sich a guid kickin' if'n you stick that sword intae me one muir time," shouted the third, turning and hurling himself at one of his brothers.
Terry Pratchett
#9. But far within him something cried For the great tragedy to start, The pang in lingering mercy fall And sorrow break upon his heart. - EDWIN MUIR
Doris Lessing
#10. Though the redwoods in Muir Woods are hauntingly beautiful trees, they are relatively small and not very tall, at least for redwoods.
Richard Preston
#11. The normally ninety-minute drive from Marin to Muir Woods only took about an hour.
Seanan McGuire
#12. His treatment of mechanical problems wasn't divorced from the worldly situations in which they arise, and as a result [John Muir's service manual on Volkswagens] is extraordinarily clear and useful. It has a human quality, as well.
Matthew B. Crawford
#13. I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.
David R. Brower
#14. I would say Gary Snyder, who is from my part of the world as a poet and environmental thinker, will be read just as Henry Thoreau as John Muir will continue to be read.
Robert Hass
#15. Now, wilderness can be seen as a useful fiction, a fiction constructed by John Muir and his heirs and deployed to keep places from being destroyed by resource extraction and wholesale development.
Rebecca Solnit
#16. The golden rule when reading the menu is, if you cannot pronounce it, you cannot afford it.
Frank Muir
#17. The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all.
Edwin Muir
#18. Good luck and Good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers.
John Muir
#19. Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.
John Muir
#20. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell ... I asked the boulders I met, whence they came and whither they were going.
John Muir
#21. Of all the mountain ranges I have climbed, I like the Sierra Nevada the best.
John Muir
#22. The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.
John Muir
#23. To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.
John Muir
#24. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.
John Muir
#25. I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?
John Muir
#26. I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.
John Muir
#27. In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir
#28. Nature has always something rare to show us ... and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
John Muir
#29. See how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and a calm mind.
John Muir
#30. I bade adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.
John Muir
#31. But to gain a perfect view, one must go yet further, over a curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink.
John Muir
#32. The grand show is eternal
It is always sunrise somewhere
John Muir
#33. Beetles and butterflies are sometimes restricted to small areas. Each mountain in a range, and even the different zones of a mountain, may have its own peculiar species. But the house-fly seems to be everywhere. I wonder if any island in mid-ocean is flyless.
John Muir
#34. How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!
John Muir
#35. The first time it felt really dangerous, like the sort of thing you had to lock the doors and close the curtains on because if anybody saw you, God would strike you down with a thunderbolt. But I took to it like a duck to water.
Jamie Muir
#36. Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!
John Muir
#37. I have observed in foolish awe
The dateless mid-days of the law
And seen indifferent justice done
By everyone on everyone.
Edwin Muir
#38. Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humour is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.
Frank Muir
#39. Swift flies our time on pinions fleet, Like vapours on the breeze; The transient bliss we now call sweet, The passing moments seize. The gilded joy, the present hour, Soon wing themselves away; Departing like the fading flower That pleas'd us Yesterday.
William Muir
#40. These beautiful days ... do not exist as mere pictures - maps hung upon the walls of memory to brighten at times when touched by association or will ... They saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always.
John Muir
#41. Look! Nature is overflowing with the grandeur of God!
John Muir
#42. Bread without butter or coffee without milk is an awful calamity, as if everything before being put in our mouth must first be held under a cow.
John Muir
#43. I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention ...
John Muir
#44. Many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways.
John Muir
#45. 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
#46. Yosemite Park ... None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.
John Muir
#47. The reasons why I left were to do with my interest in Buddhism. There were experiences over a period of about six months which caused me to decide to give up music, so one morning I felt I had to go to E.G. Management and tell them.
Jamie Muir
#48. But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life ... as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures ...
John Muir
#49. But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.
John Muir
#50. The blessings of one mountain day, whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.
John Muir
#51. The speeches to be wary of are those that begin with I'm just going to say a few words.
Frank Muir
#52. There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.
John Muir
#53. Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before.
John Muir
#54. The glances over cocktails That seem to be so sweet Don't seem quite so amorous Over Shredded Wheat
Frank Muir
#55. Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.
John Muir
#56. 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
#57. Keep in view the common good of the people for all time.
John Muir
#58. In the eternal youth of Nature, you may renew your own.
John Muir
#59. I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.
John Muir
#60. The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.
John Muir
#61. In the woods is perpetual youth.
John Muir
#62. Time also was said to be an accident: it "exists not by itself; but simply from the things which happen, the sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is present, and what is to follow after.
Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir
#63. How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
John Muir
#64. I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.
John Muir
#65. Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light
a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.
John Muir
#66. One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.
John Muir
#68. There is a road that turning always Cuts off the country of Again. Archers stand there on every side And as it runstime's deer is slain, And lies where it has lain.
Edwin Muir
#69. Kindness and courage can repair time's faults, And serving him breeds patience and courtesy In us, light sojourners and passing subjects.
Edwin Muir
#70. Wilderness is a necessity ... They will see what I meant in time. There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. In some it is only a germ, of course, but the germ will grow.
John Muir
#71. So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees ...
John Muir
#72. C. albus ... I think the very loveliest of all the lily family,- a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and so be made better. It puts the wildest mountaineer on his good behavior. With this plant the whole world would seem rich though non other existed.
John Muir
#73. How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!
John Muir
#74. The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.
John Muir
#75. While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
#76. Going to the woods is going home.
John Muir
#77. I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring Godful beauty.
John Muir
#78. All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.
John Muir
#79. Never while anything is left of me shall this ... camp be forgotten. It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as part and parcel of mind and body alike.
John Muir
#80. Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.
John Muir
#81. Large flocks of butterflies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness.
John Muir
#82. When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you'll find its attached to everything else.
John Muir
#83. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir
#84. He had gone to the higher Sierras ... [about Ralph Waldo Emerson's death]
John Muir
#85. In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.
John Muir
#86. I was a beginner again. I practiced hard and used to listen very closely to recordings of American jazz drummers such as Tony Williams and Kenny Clarke.
Jamie Muir
#87. Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite.
John Muir
#88. All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light.
John Muir
#89. Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.
John Muir
#90. Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes- all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.
John Muir
#91. I am very blessed. The Valley is full of people, but they do not annoy me. I revolve in pathless places and in higher rocks than the world and his ribbony wife can reach.
John Muir
#92. The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling ... every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.
John Muir
#93. Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.
Frank Muir
#94. We turned and sailed away, joining the outgoing bergs, while "gloria in excels is" still seemed to be sounding over all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had gain would enrich our lives forever.
John Muir
#95. I never saw a discontented tree.
John Muir
#96. Society doesn't need that everybody is behaving in the full normal way ... like people in a Buddhist monastery ... But eccentricity may also connect with the irrational.
John Muir
#97. Going into the woods, is going home
John Muir
#98. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.
John Muir
#99. Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were only made for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.
John Muir
#100. Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.
John Muir
