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Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.

John Burroughs

To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Bottom Delicacy Extreme Leave Live Mechanism Microspocial Nothing Remarkable
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
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
Without 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 BURROUGHS

Flower Less More Name Still Strange Without
Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Alon Alone Being Concern Develop Disinterest Endow Intelligence Own Primarily Safety Seem Self
The secret of happiness is something to do.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Do Happiness Secret Something
Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Breasted Bred Democratic Distant Family Grossbeak High Native Orchard Rose Starling Ways
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

Accept Alone Fast Go Guide Hold Science Sole Take Theology Verifiable
Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the city will have on coming generations.
JOHN BURROUGHS

City Come Effect Generation Sometimes Through Worry
Summer 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

Affection Appeal Art Foster Human Impulse Inquiry Seductive Sentiment Summer Versatile Wooing
A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Did Nobody Once Somebody Want
Emerson’s fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established during his lifetime by the books he gave to the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Book During Emerson Establish Fame Gave Lifetime Thinker World Writer
The 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 BURROUGHS

Art Betray Bird Conceal Kind Material Position Secret Tradition Violation Weave
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature. And the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Book Constant Friend Great Life Most Name Nature Precious Resource Three
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 BURROUGHS

Bird Body Carry Ground Hop Most Neck Rite Run Stiff Upon
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Crave Lover Nature Observe Unadulterated Unsweetened

Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.

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Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.

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Popular Authors

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