Top 272 Quotes & Sayings by John Burroughs
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author John Burroughs.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
England is not a country of granite and marble, but of chalk, marl, and clay.
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. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse.
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.
A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
If you think you can do it, you can.
Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.
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.
We now use the word 'nature' very much as our fathers used the word 'God.'
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense - the home sense - which operates unerringly.
Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type, most people were shocked by the thought; it was intensely repugnant to their feelings.
Even in rugged Scotland, nature is scarcely wilder than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short of the ferity of the moose and caribou.
There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird. He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting, he feeds her regularly.
To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.
A plump, well-fed stream is as satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree. One source of charm in the English landscape is the full, placid stream the season through; no desiccated watercourses will you see there, nor any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to get over the ground.
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
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.
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.
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.
One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
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.
Leap, and the net will appear.
Why, we have invented the whole machinery of the supernatural, with its unseen spirits and powers, good and bad, to account for things, because we found the universal everyday nature too cheap, too common, too vulgar.
Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.
All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.
I have discovered the secret of happiness. It is work.
Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.
The pond-lily is a star and easily takes the first place among lilies; and the expeditions to her haunts, and the gathering her where she rocks upon the dark, secluded waters of some pool or lakelet, are the crown and summit of the floral expeditions of summer.
Without the name, any flower is still more or less a stranger to you. The name betrays its family, its relationship to other flowers, and gives the mind something tangible to grasp. It is very difficult for persons who have had no special training to learn the names of the flowers from the botany.
Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
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.
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature. And the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.
There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.
He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
The red squirrel is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.
Our flying squirrel is in no proper sense a flyer. On the ground, he is more helpless than a chipmunk, because less agile. He can only sail or slide down a steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of another.
Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
The secret of happiness is something to do.
We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune... Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment.
Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms. The feminine character, the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness, are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the masculine mind.
How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements!
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