John Burroughs
We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.Collection: Wind
I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round.Collection: Summer
I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.Collection: Angel
Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.Collection: Atheist
Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.Collection: Claims
The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.Collection: Shoes
What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.Collection: Winter
Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.Collection: Life
A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.Collection: Life
I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.Collection: Flower
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics in Nature's church; all are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do not have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, in catacombs, in garbled texts, in miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of today; it is now and here; it is everywhere.Collection: Mother
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.Collection: Inspirational
When you bait your hook with your heart, the fish always bite.Collection: Heart
I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.Collection: Stars
Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.Collection: Realizing
In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.Collection: Stars
The place to observe nature is where you are.Collection: Nature
In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.Collection: Weather
I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.Collection: Reading