- Character
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- Nov 07, 2020
John Burroughs Quotes
Most Famous John Burroughs Quotes of All Time!
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Come
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- Nov 07, 2020
Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.
- Nature
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- Nov 07, 2020
We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune... Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment.
- Father
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- Nov 07, 2020
Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me.
- I Am
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the city will have on coming generations.
- Fight
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- Nov 07, 2020
Living in the city is a discordant thing, an unnatural thing. The city, a place to which one goes to do business, is a place where men overreach each other in the fight for money. But it is not a place in which one can live.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
- Birds
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- Nov 07, 2020
If America wishes to preserve her native birds, we must help supply what civilization has taken from them. The building of cities and towns, the cutting down of forests, and the draining of pools and swamps have deprived American birds of their original homes and food supply.
- He
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- Nov 07, 2020
Man has climbed up from some lower animal form, but he has, as it were, pulled the ladder up after him.
- Money
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- Nov 07, 2020
We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
- Happy
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- Nov 07, 2020
We are really here to be happy and to make others happy.
- Motto
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- Nov 07, 2020
My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Endowed
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fear
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- Nov 07, 2020
Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.
- Bird
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- Nov 07, 2020
The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then it is betrayed into weaving into its structure showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which give its secret away and which seem to violate all the traditions of its kind.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world.
- Earth
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- Nov 07, 2020
I crave and seek a natural explanation of all phenomena upon this earth, but the word 'natural' to me implies more than mere chemistry and physics. The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
The love of nature is a different thing from the love of science, though the two may go together.
- Beautiful
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- Nov 07, 2020
Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives: the fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.
- Food
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- Nov 07, 2020
The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big, and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
The trunk of a tree is like a community where only one generation at a time is engaged in active business, the great mass of the population being retired and adding solidity and permanence to the social organism.
- Heart
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Nature
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- Nov 07, 2020
To strong, susceptible characters, the music of nature is not confined to sweet sounds.
- Nature
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end.
- Each One
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- Nov 07, 2020
When a herd of cattle see a strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.
- Champion
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Grass
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the most graceful of warriors is the robin. I know few prettier sights than two males challenging and curveting about each other upon the grass in early spring. Their attentions to each other are so courteous and restrained.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
The phoebe-bird is a wise architect and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other bird. Its modest ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest the look of a natural growth or accretion.
- Body
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fall
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- Nov 07, 2020
One reason, doubtless, why squirrels are so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is that, if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain no injury. Every species of tree-squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying, at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Guilty
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- Nov 07, 2020
The red squirrel is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.
- Laughter
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- Nov 07, 2020
There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laughter.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.
- History
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- Nov 07, 2020
If one gains an interest in the history of the earth, he is quite sure to gain an interest in the history of the life on the earth. If the former illustrates the theory of development, so must the latter. The geologist is pretty sure to be an evolutionist.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
I am sure I was an evolutionist in the abstract, or by the quality and complexion of my mind, before I read Darwin, but to become an evolutionist in the concrete, and accept the doctrine of the animal origin of man, has not for me been an easy matter.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
It seems to me that evolution adds greatly to the wonder of life because it takes it out of the realm of the arbitrary, the exceptional, and links it to the sequence of natural causation.
- Family
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Evidence
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- Nov 07, 2020
All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.
- Plants
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- Nov 07, 2020
The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he will tell you where to look for the lady's-slipper, the columbine, or the harebell. On the same principles, the ornithologist will direct you where to look for the greenlets, the wood-sparrow, or the chewink.
- Fire
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Each Day
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Mind
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Go
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- Nov 07, 2020
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
- Leap
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- Nov 07, 2020
Leap, and the net will appear.
- Bad
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- Nov 07, 2020
There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
- Nov 07, 2020
The secret of happiness is something to do.
- Greatest
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- Nov 07, 2020
The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
- Nobody
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- Nov 07, 2020
A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
- Failure
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- Nov 07, 2020
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
- Done
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- Nov 07, 2020
Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
- Grow
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- Nov 07, 2020
How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
- Curiosity
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- Nov 07, 2020
Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.
- Great Opportunity
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- Nov 07, 2020
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
- Failure
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- Nov 07, 2020
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
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- Nov 07, 2020
Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
- Patience
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Men
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- Nov 07, 2020
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
- Feeling
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- Nov 07, 2020
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
- Nov 07, 2020
If you think you can do it, you can.
- Congenial
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Believe
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- Nov 07, 2020
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
- Imagination
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- Nov 07, 2020
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
- Good Thing
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- Nov 07, 2020
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
- I Am
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Endowed
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- Nov 07, 2020
The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
- Human
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- Nov 07, 2020
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Kind
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- Nov 07, 2020
I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Marriage
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- Nov 07, 2020
A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.
- Feelings
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020