87 Most Inspiring John Muir Quotes for Nature Lovers 2024
John Muir is best known as the “Father of our National Parks” and is to thank for many of the USA’s earliest wilderness preservation efforts.
He had an unrivalled passion for nature and adventure and loved encouraging people to get out into the wild.
So if you’re ready to be inspired, check out this bumper list of John Muir quotes that are guaranteed to have you yearning for the outdoors.
Not only can you use these quotes from John Muir to energize you, but they are also perfect for those looking for Outdoor and Nature Captions for Instagram!
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Inspirational Quotes from John Muir
The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark
Most people are on the world, not in it.
Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal.
Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees
John Muir Quotes about Life
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
Wilderness is a necessity… there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls
Nothing truly wild is unclean.
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Best John Muir Quotes about Nature
I never saw a discontented tree
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin
There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself
None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir Mountain Quotes
There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream
There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties
The mountains are calling and I must go.
One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Mountain Thoughts by John Muir
Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen
Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.
Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains – mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature’s workshops.
Top John Muir Sayings about Forests
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
And into the woods I go, to lose my mind and find my soul
Come to the woods; for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods
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.
One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else
Good John Muir Quotes Mountains
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
Going to the mountains is going home
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of a mountaineer.
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 out into the mountains to learn the news
Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts
Wilderness Quotes John Muir
We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness 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
Famous John Muir Quotes
The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of our bodies, making them glide and sing
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong
One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
The power of imagination makes us infinite
John Muir Famous Quotes
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
All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander
The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day
John Muir Nature Quotes
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
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.
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue
I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness
Quotes by John Muir on Nature
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.
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
Clever John Muir Quotations
Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
The snow is melting into music
To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world
We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls
Best John Muir Yosemite Quotes
John Muir helped draw up its proposed boundaries of Yosemite National Park in 1889 and so has a close connection with this iconic place, if you want more inspiration check out these Yosemite National Parks Quotes and Sayings.
It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden
The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on
Yosemite Park is a place of rest… None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree
Ever since the establishment of the Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and I suppose this will go on as part of the universal battle between right and wrong, however much of its boundaries may be shorn, or its wild beauty destroyed.
I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.
A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.
The famous Yosemite Valley … includes the head waters of the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, two of the most songful streams in the world; innumerable lakes and waterfalls and smooth silky lawns; the noblest forests, the loftiest granite domes, the deepest ice-sculptured canons, the brightest crystalline pavements, and snowy mountains soaring into the sky twelve and thirteen thousand feet.
Environmental Quotes by John Muir
The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong
Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away
Wherever there were glaciers, the world was in a constant state of creation.
It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it
The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.
John Muir Quotes Yosemite
[Yosemite] is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.
No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life…as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.
Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.
Down through the middle of the [Yosemite] Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.
Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds.
Nature Quotes John Muir
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty
“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
“Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life”
“How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!”
“Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”
John Muir Quotes about Trees
“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.”
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn
“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
“The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.”
John Muir Inspirational Quotes
“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.
“At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.”
“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world – the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”
“Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”
That’s the Top John Muir Quotes Nature
That’s the end of my bumper list, so I hope you’ve managed to find the perfect John Muir quote.
I’d love to know which one is your favorite, and if I’ve missed any awesome quotes by John Muir then please let me know in the comments below.
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