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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.

John Burroughs

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Botany Delight Dull Most People Perennial School Study Taught Young
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Deceptive Difficult Distant Great Lure Opportunity
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
The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Baby Birth Bloom Either Event Flower Forever Give Key Laboratory Method Secret
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
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
The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Chimney Draught Draw Happy Movement Open Something
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
Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Aspiration Book Experience Father Knew Much Peculalr Religious Seal
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
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
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
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
The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he will tell you where to look for the lady’s-slipper, the columbine, or the harebell.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Botanist Country Define Distribute Heribell Lady Landscape Locality Market Plant Slipper Talk Tell
It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Architect Crisp Crystal Fire Flake Frost Full Life Sunbean
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

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.

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The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.

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