John Muir

"Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again."

"I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do."

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

"Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

"Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another."

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter."

"Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God, and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love."

"Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love."

"Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you."

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

"The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

"The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves."

"There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords."

"Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!"

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."