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" I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness. "
John Muir
Need
Place
Better
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" 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. "
John Muir
Hidden
Realize
Rocks
" As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned, it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree. "
John Muir
Grow
Tree
Great
" 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
Beauty
Mountains
Nature
" Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash. "
John Muir
Earth
Man
Living
" When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent. "
John Muir
Continent
Part
California
" The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage. "
John Muir
Strength
Beauty
Heart
" In most mills, only the best portions of the best trees are used, while the ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires which kill much of what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the seedlings on which the permanence of the forest depends. "
John Muir
Trees
Best
Together
" The practical importance of the preservation of our forests is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams. "
John Muir
Importance
Forests
Preservation
" No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment. "
John Muir
Will
Forget
Tree
" Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite. "
John Muir
Like
Wings
Boy
" 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. "
John Muir
Trees
Disease
Fools
" Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. "
John Muir
Calm
Opening
Mountain
" From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. "
John Muir
Earth
Creator
Us
" The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat. "
John Muir
Hunting
Fighting
Game
" Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need - not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment. "
John Muir
Enjoy Life
Good
Life
" I bade adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God. "
John Muir
Life
Rest
Devote
" 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. "
John Muir
Together
Beauty
Kind
" 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. "
John Muir
Nature
Water
Youth
" All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit - the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine. "
John Muir
World
Mountains
Heart
" The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world. "
John Muir
World
Distance
Glory
" The power of imagination makes us infinite. "
John Muir
Us
Imagination
Power
" Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. "
John Muir
Wisdom
Mountains
Good
" One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. "
John Muir
Temple
Heart
Man
" The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe. "
John Muir
God
Man
Great
" The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. "
John Muir
Roots
Redwood
Begin
" 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. "
John Muir
Enthusiasm
Silent
Storm
" How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society. "
John Muir
Earthquakes
How
Society
" 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. "
John Muir
Facts
God
Men
" There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords. "
John Muir
Control
Power
May
" Beetles and butterflies are sometimes restricted to small areas. Each mountain in a range, and even the different zones of a mountain, may have its own peculiar species. But the house-fly seems to be everywhere. I wonder if any island in mid-ocean is flyless. "
John Muir
Mountain
Island
Small