I am sure I was an evolutionist in the abstract, or by the quality and complexion of my mind, before I read Darwin, but to become an evolutionist in the concrete, and accept the doctrine of the animal origin of man, has not for me been an easy matter.
JOHN BURROUGHSRobin 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.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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 -
The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
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 -
The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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 -
The geologist is pretty sure to be an evolutionist.
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 -
A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Where country life is safe and enjoyable, where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state of civilization prevails.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Leap, and the net will appear.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite?
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country’s poets, and among English poets generally: a cropping out again, after so many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain.
JOHN BURROUGHS