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.
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.
More John Burroughs Quotes
-
-
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
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 -
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?
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings – travels in warm climes.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
On the same principles, the ornithologist will direct you where to look for the greenlets, the wood-sparrow, or the chewink.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Even in rugged Scotland, nature is scarcely wilder than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short of the ferity of the moose and caribou.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
I have discovered the secret of happiness – it is work, either with the hands or the head.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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 -
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.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
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






