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The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

John Burroughs

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Broken Endure Man Mend Miracle Much Only Spirit
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
The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army: the ranks are being continually depleted and continually recruited.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Active Army Campaign Continue Depleted Hazardous Life Like Swarm Rank Recruit
The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds.
JOHN BURROUGHS

All Beautiful Bound Clime Endowed Every Grace Know Master Vagabond
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
The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to be disposed of, they starve her to death, and the queen herself will sting nothing but royalty, nothing but a rival queen.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Bee Common Death Dispose Nothing Queen Rival Royalty String Strive
Man takes root at his feet, and at best, he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Carriage Communication Establish Feel House Love Magnetic Man More Plant Potted Soil Sole Take Root Touch
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
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

Being Clime Firtunnate Human Life Many Mean Northern Sleep Travel Warm Winter
More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Any Great Make More Poet Portray Suggests Understood Value Whitman
August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements!
JOHN BURROUGHS

August Beautiful Calm Ease Hawk Hen High Leisure Majestic Month Most Movement Noticeable Sail
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Animal Attachment Back Bird Distance Find Home Instinct Remove Strong Treat
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

Bird Buoyancy Ecstatic Frame Heart Idea Intense Large Lung Poet Scale Song Suggestion Symbol Top Vehement
We are really here to be happy and to make others happy.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Happy Make Other Really
Every species of tree-squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying, at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Break Doubtless Ease Fall Fly Great Height Make Reason Rudimentary Squirrel
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

Absorb Agency Animal Food Gorge Litle Mass Molecule Nourish Power Seize Vegetable World

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

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The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

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