To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives.
JOHN BURROUGHSThe fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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Emerson was such an important figure in our literary history, and in the moral and religious development of our people, that attention cannot be directed to him too often.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
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 -
The secret of happiness is something to do.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army: the ranks are being continually depleted and continually recruited.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Nature teaches more than she preaches.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Why, we have invented the whole machinery of the supernatural, with its unseen spirits and powers, good and bad, to account for things, because we found the universal everyday nature too cheap, too common, too vulgar.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements!
JOHN BURROUGHS -
A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
JOHN BURROUGHS






