John Muir

The mountains are calling and I must go.

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.

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

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

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

Going to the mountains is going home.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand storms and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every cell and fiber of our flesh.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the stars and hear the wind sing.

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get into the mountains to learn the news.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.

The sequoias belong to the mountains and the mountains to them. They are in every way the noblest of a noble race.