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Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.

John Burroughs

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
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
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
When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Again Ancestor Apelike Conclusion Descended Draw Feel Man Most People Publish Shock
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Animal Depend Hime Home Many Outfit Outswim Reason Resourcefulness Some Time Upon
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

Cattle Cured Each Fright Herd Horse Induce Object One Satisfied Smell Sniff Soon
Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Beautiful Emotion Literature Mysterious Religion Sublime
The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Fact Life Look Lover Mean Mere Nature Own Something Term Translate
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 BURROUGHS

Arbitrary Causation Evolution Exceptional Greatly Link Out Realm Seem Situation
The queen, I say, is the mother bee; it is undoubtedly complimenting her to call her a queen and invest her with regal authority, yet she is a superb creature and looks every inch a queen.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Authority Call Compliment Creature Invest Look Mother Queen Say Superb Undount
Nature furnishes the conditions – the solitude – and the soul furnishes the entertainment.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Condition Entertainment Furnish Nature Solitude Soul
To still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms, it means death.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Again Body Death Fierce Human Insect Many Other Prototype Soul Struggle Together
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
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Bristling Bud Climate Concept Congenial Grown Human Many Nature Promise Thorn
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

Aspiration Flight Free Holiday Human Live Many Poet Realize Song Suggestion
Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Begin End Great Infinite Know Nothing Small Space Time

Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.

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Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.

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