John Burroughs was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the U.S. conservation movement. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871. These John Burroughs quotes will motivate you.
Best John Burroughs Quotes
- “The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.” ~ John Burroughs
- “I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” ~ John Burroughs
- “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
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“We are made strong by what we overcome.” ~ John Burroughs
- “Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don’t despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.” ~ John Burroughs
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“How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature.” ~ John Burroughs
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“If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.” ~ John Burroughs
- “He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.” ~ John Burroughs
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“Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all – that has been my religion.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.” ~ John Burroughs
- “I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.” ~ John Burroughs Quotes
- “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
- “Happiness comes most to persons who seek it least and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought, it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
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“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.” ~ John Burroughs
- “Love is the measure of life; only so far as we love do we really live.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “When you bait your hook with your heart, the fish always bite.” ~ John Burroughs
- “If you think you can do it, you can.” ~ John Burroughs
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“The secret of happiness is something to do.” ~ John Burroughs
- “One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.” ~ John Burroughs
- “To the scientist, Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes; to the artist, she is a storehouse of pictures; to the poet, she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration; to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables; to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
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“The place to observe nature is where you are.” ~ John Burroughs
- “Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.” ~ John Burroughs
- “The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time–the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird–are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.” ~ John Burroughs
- “The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
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“To see Earth fully we already need to love it” ~ John Burroughs
- “The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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 Quotes
- “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
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
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“Close scrutiny of an object in nature will nearly always yield some significant fact.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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.” ~ John Burroughs
- “What a severe yet master artist old Winter is… No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.” ~ John Burroughs
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“We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.” ~ John Burroughs
- “[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wildlife. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.” ~ John Burroughs Quotes
- “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, maybe yours by stretching forth your hand and taking it.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
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“The God of the Puritans…was a monster too horrible to contemplate.” ~ John Burroughs
- “It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “The Universe is a pretty big place… And the one thing I know about nature is it hates to waste anything. So I guess I’d say if it is just us, an awful lot of space is going to waste. The earth is not alone, it is not like a single apple on a tree; there are many apples on the tree, and there are many trees in the orchard.” ~ John Burroughs
- “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
- “The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.” ~ John Burroughs
