75 John Muir Quotes About Nature, Life and Adventure

Summertime is John Muir time. The Scottish-American naturalist and author, who lived from 1838 to 1914, was an early advocate for wilderness preservation in the United States and is one of the reasons America has such well-preserved outdoor spaces. His writings and activism helped establish the National Park System and inspired generations of nature lovers and conservationists. It's no wonder these John Muir quotes continue to resonate with outdoorsy individuals.

These impressive quotes showcase both his complete connection to the great outdoors and his eloquent way of describing the world around him. As he helped protect Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon and Mt. Rainier as national parks, it's no wonder he's also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks."

Enjoy these famous and motivational sayings from the founder of The Sierra Club !

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75 Best John Muir Quotes

1. “The mountains are calling and I must go, and I will work on while I can, studying incessantly.”

2. "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

3. "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

4. "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

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5. "Going to the mountains is going home."

6. "The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."

7. "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike."

8. "The sun shines not on us but in us."

9. "This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."

10. "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."

11. "Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life."

12. "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees."

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13. "Most people are on the world, not in it."

14. "How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!"

15. "The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing."

16. "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity."

17. "None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild."

18. "I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness."

19. "Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

20. "Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality."

21. "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."

22. "As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can."

23. "The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right."

24. "Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest!"

25. "There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords."

26. "The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts."

27. "No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening — still all is Beauty!"

28. "Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions."

29. "Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!"

30. "The snow is melting into music."

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31. "One touch of nature makes all the world kin."

32. "I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news."

33. "Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds, or the written music of water written in river-lines?"

34. "The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

35. "One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books."

36. "Wilderness is a necessity... there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls."

37. "The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it."

38. "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools."

39. "The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage."

40. "Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer."

41. "The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."

42. "There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself."

43. "How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind!"

44. "Going to the woods is going home."

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45. "I never saw a discontented tree."

46. "Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another."

47. "The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."

48. "In God's wildness lies the hope of the world."

49. "I'd rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains."

50. "The highest revelation is that God is in every man."

51. "No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest."

52. "Come to the woods, for here is rest."

53. "I always befriended animals and have said many a good word for them. Even to the least-loved mosquitoes I gave many a meal, and told them to go in peace."

54. "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

55. "The power of imagination makes us infinite."

56. "When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."

57. "Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish."

58. "Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones."

59. "The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted."

60. "How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!"

61. "The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly."

62. "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."

63. "No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them."

64. "The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread."

65. "To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world."

66. "Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter."

67. "The deep bass notes of the falls, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools."

68. "In a general way his music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized." - Muir describing the Water Ouzel

69. "Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated."

70. "Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen."

71. "I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my fellow mortals.

72. "Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed Nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

73. "Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves."

74. “It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising."

75. "Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted."

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