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" We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune... Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment. "

John Burroughs

Nature

Tis

Talk

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

" Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. "

" 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. "

" The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense - the home sense - which operates unerringly. "

" The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song. "

" 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. "

" The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he will tell you where to look for the lady's-slipper, the columbine, or the harebell. On the same principles, the ornithologist will direct you where to look for the greenlets, the wood-sparrow, or the chewink. "

" Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man. "

" Leap, and the net will appear. "

" If one gains an interest in the history of the earth, he is quite sure to gain an interest in the history of the life on the earth. If the former illustrates the theory of development, so must the latter. The geologist is pretty sure to be an evolutionist. "

" Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the city will have on coming generations. "

John Burroughs

Sometimes

City

" 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

" 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. "

" It seems to me that evolution adds greatly to the wonder of life because it takes it out of the realm of the arbitrary, the exceptional, and links it to the sequence of natural causation. "

John Burroughs

Wonder

Natural

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

" No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through. "

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

" You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type, most people were shocked by the thought; it was intensely repugnant to their feelings. "

" To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. "

" If you think you can do it, you can. "

" Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight. "

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

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

" To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another. "

" 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. "

" I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life. Where country life is safe and enjoyable, where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state of civilization prevails. "

" Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all. "

John Burroughs

Others

Nails