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" There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laughter. "

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" The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then it is betrayed into weaving into its structure showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which give its secret away and which seem to violate all the traditions of its kind. "

John Burroughs

Kind

Bird

Art

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

" The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart. "

" Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways. "

John Burroughs

Family

Birds

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

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

" We are really here to be happy and to make others happy. "

" Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. "

" If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go. "

John Burroughs

Alone

Fast

" Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms. The feminine character, the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness, are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the masculine mind. "

" Without the name, any flower is still more or less a stranger to you. The name betrays its family, its relationship to other flowers, and gives the mind something tangible to grasp. It is very difficult for persons who have had no special training to learn the names of the flowers from the botany. "

" The phoebe-bird is a wise architect and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other bird. Its modest ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest the look of a natural growth or accretion. "

" Whitman was Emerson translated from the abstract into the concrete. "

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

" Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation. "

John Burroughs

Born

Observation

" Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of, rather than a participator in, the activities - political, commercial, sociological, scientific - of the times in which I have lived. "

John Burroughs

Political

Others

" The dog is often quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I have never known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hit him. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, it would quickly receive the imprint of his teeth. "

" The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it. "

" Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet. "

" The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big, and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule. "

" There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird. He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting, he feeds her regularly. "

" To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives: the fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top. "

John Burroughs

Tree

Top

" My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice. "

" We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold. "

" Nearly every season, I make the acquaintance of one or more new flowers. It takes years to exhaust the botanical treasures of any one considerable neighborhood, unless one makes a dead set at it, like an herbalist. "

" To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings - travels in warm climes. To still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms, it means death. "

" I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth. "

" Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure. "

John Burroughs

Mind

Leisure

" The naturist must see all things in the light of his experiences in this world. "

" 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! "