How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

— John Muir

I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.

— John Muir

If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere dragged, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles -- a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story -- the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent up rush of sap in plants, storms of every sort -- each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

— John Muir

If people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.

— John Muir

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

— John Muir

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.

— John Muir

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

— John Muir

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

— John Muir