I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life.
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.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
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 -
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 -
I have discovered the secret of happiness. It is work.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird. He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting, he feeds her regularly.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
How many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
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 -
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 -
England is not a country of granite and marble, but of chalk, marl, and clay.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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 -
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.
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 -
My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.
JOHN BURROUGHS