As one of America’s forefathers of conservation, John Muir remains inspiring. He dedicated his life to preserving America’s wilderness for everyone else to enjoy. Here we’ve brought you the best John Muir quotes to inspire you to explore the outdoors. This collection includes the 5 best John Muir quotes, the most famous John Muir quote, John Muir nature quotes, John Muir mountain quotes, John Muir tree quotes, inspirational quotes from John Muir, walking and hiking quotes by John Muir, John Muir Yosemite quotes, river quotes by John Muir and last quotes from John Muir about wilderness.
If you want something to help you get out and get active, this list of the best John Muir quotes to inspire you to explore the outdoors is perfect.
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Jump ahead to your favorite category or scroll on through to find your favorite John Muir quote.
The 5 Best John Muir Quotes
Here are the 5 best John Muir quotes about the outdoors.
- “The mountains are calling and I must go.”
- “Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
- “How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over.”
- “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”
- “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
Most Famous John Muir Quote
Here is the most famous John Muir quote. And if you like quotes about the forest, head to our list of Best Forest Quotes.
“And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”
John Muir Nature Quotes
Check out these John Muir nature quotes. Choose the best John Muir nature quotes from the list below, then you might also like our lists of Nature Quotes, Best Short Nature Quotes and Nature Captions.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
“There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.”
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees.”
RELATED QUOTES: Sunshine Quotes
“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”
“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.”
“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.”
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
If you like this quote head to our list of Finding Peace Quotes for more.
“Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.”
John Muir Mountain Quotes
Take a look at these John Muir mountain quotes. If you like these, you should also check out our lists of Best Mountain Quotes, Inspirational Mountain Quotes, Funny Mountain Quotes, Quotes About Mountains and Clouds, Top of the Mountain Quotes, Short Mountain Quotes and Quotes About Climbing Mountains.
“One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.”
“Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.”
“Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.”
“Going to the mountains is going home.”
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives to the mountains!”
RELATED QUOTES: Sun Quotes and Sunlight Quotes
“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.”
“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts.”
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
“Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”
“At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.”
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
John Muir Tree Quotes
Enjoy these John Muir tree quotes, then head over to our list of best Tree Quotes for more.
“I never saw a discontented tree.”
“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.”
“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away.”
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.”
“Come to the woods; for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods
One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.”
Inspirational Quotes from John Muir
Get motivated with these inspirational quotes from John Muir. If you like inspirational quotes, you might also want to check out our lists of Short Inspirational Quotes, Inspirational Morning Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Today, Funny Inspirational Quotes and Inspirational Quotes for Work.
“Most people are on the world, not in it.”
“Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal.”
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
“One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.”
“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
“The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.”
“The snow is melting into music.”
“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
“The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.”
“Wherever there were glaciers, the world was in a constant state of creation.”
“It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood.”
“Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”
“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.”
“How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!”
Walking and Hiking Quotes by John Muir
You’ll love these walking and hiking quotes by John Muir. You might also want to check out our lists of Hiking Quotes, Walking Quotes and Funny Hiking Quotes.
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of a mountaineer.”
“I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.”
“In every walk in nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
“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.”
“The life of a mountaineer seems to be particularly favorable to the development of soul-life, as well as limb-life, each receiving abundance of exercise and abundance of food.”
“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”
John Muir Yosemite Quotes
Here are some John Muir Yosemite quotes.
“It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.”
“The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.”
“Yosemite Park is a place of rest… None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.”
“Ever since the establishment of the Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and I suppose this will go on as part of the universal battle between right and wrong, however much of its boundaries may be shorn, or its wild beauty destroyed.”
“I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.”
“A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.”
“No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life…as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.”
“Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.”
“Down through the middle of the [Yosemite] Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.”
“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds.”
River Quotes by John Muir
Check out these river quotes by John Muir. You might also like our list of River Quotes.
“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains – mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature’s workshops.”
“There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream.”
“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; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
“The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of our bodies, making them glide and sing.”
“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.”
Last Quotes from John Muir About Wilderness
These last quotes from John Muir about wilderness are worth checking out.
“Nothing truly wild is unclean.”
“None of nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.”
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.”
“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.”
“Wilderness is a necessity… there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.”
“All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.”
“To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.”
“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
“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.”
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