black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.

John Burroughs

We now use the word ‘nature’ very much as our fathers used the word ‘God.’
JOHN BURROUGHS

Father God Must Nature Now Our Use Word
The 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 BURROUGHS

Active Business Community Engage Generation Like Time Tree Trunk
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

Cheap Common Everyday Invent Machinery Nature Universal Vulgar
My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Anybody Follow Imitate Inward Look Motto Try Voice
Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Bird Bunt Cow Feet Forward Movement Oven Quall Walk
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Heal Nature Order Put Sense Soothed
In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Cloud Dispel Great Help Lamp Light Maple October Room Window
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Air Element Enough Exhilarating Find Morning Refresh Universal Walk Water
There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laughter.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Apparent Conscious Execution Human Ironical Laugh Pride Self Something Sort Squirrels
Our flying squirrel is in no proper sense a flyer. On the ground, he is more helpless than a chipmunk, because less agile. He can only sail or slide down a steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of another.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Agile Chipmunk Fly Flyer Ground Helpless Less Proper Sense Squirrel
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Born Made Naturalist Observation Pain Poet Stack Year
England is like the margin of a spring-run: near its source, always green, always cool, always moist, comparatively free from frost in winter and from drought in summer.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Always Comparitively Country Drought Green Margin Near Run Source Spring Summer Winter
Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.
JOHN BURROUGHS

After Catch Depress Fish Left Low Place Report Shore Vision Write
A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Blame Else Fail Man Many Somebody Time
Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Animal Bird Consciousness Know Probably Self Think
He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Admiration Beauty Equal Marvel Summer Winter Wonder World

Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Burroughs Quotes