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Life Quotes by John Burroughs

38 Life quotes by John Burroughs

All Life quotes John Burroughs’s page

Burroughs reflects on life’s mystery, meditating on its origin while accepting we may never know it fully. He points out that the most precious things are right nearby, without price or money. He also reminds us to look under our feet, where true power often hides.

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Without death and decay, how could life go on?

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Love is the measure of life; only so far as we love do we really live.

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Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.

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Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

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We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks.

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The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own…

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The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army: the ranks are being continually…

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Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.

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Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences…

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My books are, in a way, a record of my life - that part of it that came to flower and fruit…

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It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam.…

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If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature…

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Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the city will have on coming generations.

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One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see…

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We love the sight of the brown and ruddy earth; it is the color of life, while a snow-covered plain is the…

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There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it?…

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The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must…

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The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources…

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Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success…

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The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the…

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To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or…

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To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to…

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I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil;…

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The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources…

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The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the…

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[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of…

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“The lesson which life constantly repeats is to 'look under your feet.' You are always nearer to the divine and the true…

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I am for 100 per cent Americanism, 100 per cent efficiency, and 100 per cent life. I expect to live to be 100 years old.

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Emerson is the spokesman and prophet of youth and of a formative, idealistic age. His is a voice from the heights which…

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I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life. Where country life is safe…

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As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin,…

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If one gains an interest in the history of the earth, he is quite sure to gain an interest in the history…

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A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one,…

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If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature; and the greatest…

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“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, for all the walks I want to…

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My life has been a fortunate one; I was born under a lucky star. It seems as if both wind and tide…

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I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed…

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The most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of you has the whole wealth…

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More by John Burroughs

As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without…

Certainly in the United States, you have a constituency in the form of the weapons laboratories, and you also have the branches of the…

When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type, most people…

Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical…

Maybe that will happen with other countries as well. And so, that's why one of the things that groups like mine that work for…

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking

I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather.

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or muffled and…

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…

In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to…

One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth.

I still find each day too short..

What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel...

Following World War II, the U.S. was the architect of the UN system, and the world financial system, and the Human Rights Declaration, and…

“Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most…