There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
JOHN BURROUGHSThere is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
JOHN BURROUGHSTravel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
JOHN BURROUGHSThe 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.
JOHN BURROUGHSNo one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.
JOHN BURROUGHSThe 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.
JOHN BURROUGHSOne may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
JOHN BURROUGHSWhy, 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 BURROUGHSThe 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.
JOHN BURROUGHSThe 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 BURROUGHSYou are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
JOHN BURROUGHSIf 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.
JOHN BURROUGHSMost 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 BURROUGHSThe pond-lily is a star and easily takes the first place among lilies; and the expeditions to her haunts, and the gathering her where she rocks upon the dark.
JOHN BURROUGHSWithout the name, any flower is still more or less a stranger to you. The name betrays its family, its relationship to other flowers, and gives the mind something tangible to grasp. It is very difficult for persons who have had no special training to learn the names of the flowers from the botany.
JOHN BURROUGHSThe 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 BURROUGHSSummer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse.
JOHN BURROUGHS