To be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
JOHN BURROUGHSIf America wishes to preserve her native birds, we must help supply what civilization has taken from them.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all – that has been my religion.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Most people were shocked by the thought; it was intensely repugnant to their feelings.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
If you think you can do it, you can.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
England is not a country of granite and marble, but of chalk, marl, and clay.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
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 -
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 -
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 -
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature. And the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Our flying squirrel is in no proper sense a flyer. On the ground, he is more helpless than a chipmunk, because less agile. He can only sail or slide down a steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of another.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Emerson’s fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established during his lifetime by the books he gave to the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
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