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All Quotes by author - John Burroughs

" All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock. "

" All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. "

" A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. "

" A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying. "

" A plump, well-fed stream is as satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree. One source of charm in the English landscape is the full, placid stream the season through; no desiccated watercourses will you see there, nor any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to get over the ground. "

" A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost. "

" As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world. "

" A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did. "

" As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them. "

" August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements! "

" Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things. "

" Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him. "

" Emerson is the spokesman and prophet of youth and of a formative, idealistic age. His is a voice from the heights which are ever bathed in the sunshine of the spirit. I find that something one gets from Emerson in early life does not leave him when he grows old. "

" Emerson's fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established during his lifetime by the books he gave to the world. "

" Emerson stands apart from the other poets and essayists of New England, and of English literature generally, as of another order. He is a reversion to an earlier type, the type of the bard, the skald, the poet-seer. "

" Emerson was such an important figure in our literary history, and in the moral and religious development of our people, that attention cannot be directed to him too often. "

" England is like the margin of a spring-run: near its source, always green, always cool, always moist, comparatively free from frost in winter and from drought in summer. "

" England is not a country of granite and marble, but of chalk, marl, and clay. "

" Even in rugged Scotland, nature is scarcely wilder than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short of the ferity of the moose and caribou. "

" Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me. "

" Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man. "

" For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service. "

" He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. "

" How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. "

" How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate. "

" I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from home when my bees swarm. What a delightful summer sound it is! How they come pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand bees, each striving to get out first! "

" I am for 100 per cent Americanism, 100 per cent efficiency, and 100 per cent life. I expect to live to be 100 years old. "

" I am sure I was an evolutionist in the abstract, or by the quality and complexion of my mind, before I read Darwin, but to become an evolutionist in the concrete, and accept the doctrine of the animal origin of man, has not for me been an easy matter. "

" I crave and seek a natural explanation of all phenomena upon this earth, but the word 'natural' to me implies more than mere chemistry and physics. The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either. "

" If America wishes to preserve her native birds, we must help supply what civilization has taken from them. The building of cities and towns, the cutting down of forests, and the draining of pools and swamps have deprived American birds of their original homes and food supply. "

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