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.
JOHN BURROUGHSWhitman was Emerson translated from the abstract into the concrete.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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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 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.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The red squirrel is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The dog is often quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I have never known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hit him. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, it would quickly receive the imprint of his teeth.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The naturist must see all things in the light of his experiences in this world.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of, rather than a participator in, the activities – political, commercial, sociological, scientific – of the times in which I have lived.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
We now use the word ‘nature’ very much as our fathers used the word ‘God.’
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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.
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






