John Muir also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks” was an influential figure who dedicated his life to the preservation of wilderness in the United States. Here is a collection of the best John Muir quotes that will make you appreciate the beauty of nature and mountains, and remind you of the importance of safeguarding it.
John Muir was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, inventor, explorer, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation.
His letters, essays, and books inspired millions of readers, including presidents and congressmen. to take action to help preserve the natural environment.
Muir’s activism served as an inspiration for the preservation of many wilderness areas, including the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park.
He is also credited with being a co-founder of the Sierra Club, which is a prominent American conservation organization.
From hiking a 1000 mile to sailing trips to different parts of the world, Muir’s intense passion for nature and adventure advocated and encouraged people to connect to nature and preserve its splendor.
More than a century after his passing, these inspirational John Muir quotes continue to inspire people to explore and conserve the outdoors.
John Muir quotes reflect his deep love for and understanding of nature.
Top 10 John Muir Quotes
- “The sun shines not on us but in us.” — John Muir
famous John Muir quotes - “Most people are on the world, not in it.” — John Muir
- “One must labor for beauty as for bread.” — John Muir
- “The mountains are calling and I must go.” — John Muir
John Muir quotes - “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” — John Muir
- “Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.” — John Muir
John Muir quotes nature - “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.” — John Muir
John Muir mountain quotes - “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away.” — John Muir
- “How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!” — John Muir
quotes by John Muir - “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” — John Muir
John Muir quote - “Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.” — John Muir
Best Quotes By John Muir Quotes
- “We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.” — John Muir
- “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” — John Muir
- “I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.” — John Muir
- “The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” — John Muir
- “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” — John Muir
- “Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.” — John Muir
- “Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.” — John Muir
- “I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains.” — John Muir
- “To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.” — John Muir
- “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” — John Muir
- “Fortunately wrong cannot last. Soon or late it must fall back home to Hades, while some compensating good must surely follow.” — John Muir
- “I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
John Muir’s Quotes About Mountains
- “Going to the mountains is going home.” — John Muir
- “The mountains are calling and I must go.” — John Muir
- “There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream.” — John Muir
- “One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.” — John Muir
- “Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.” — John Muir
- “Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.” — John Muir
- “Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.” — John Muir
- “In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.” — John Muir
- “Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.” — 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.” — John Muir
- “But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone.” — John Muir
- “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
- “Then, after a long fireside rest and a glance at my notebook, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
Famous John Muir Quotes About Nature
- “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” — John Muir
John Muir - “One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.” — John Muir
- “None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.” — John Muir
- “Wherever there were glaciers, the world was in a constant state of creation.” — John Muir
- “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” — John Muir
- “The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.” — John Muir
- “Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.” — John Muir
- “There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.” — John Muir
- “Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue; indeed the body seems one palate, and tingles equally throughout.” — John Muir
- “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
- “There is a love of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
Inspirational John Muir Quotes
- “Nothing dollarable is safe.” — John Muir
- “Nothing truly wild is unclean.” — John Muir
- “The snow is melting into music.” — John Muir
- “And into the woods I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” — John Muir
- “It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood.” — John Muir
- “Allow nature’s peace to flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” — John Muir
- “Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.” — John Muir
- “The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends.” — John Muir
- “Wilderness is a necessity… there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls…” — John Muir
- “Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God’s wild fields, we find more than we seek.” — John Muir
- “Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts.” — John Muir
- “The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.” — John Muir
- “Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God, and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” — John Muir
John Muir Quotes
- “Look up and down and round about you.!” — John Muir
- “Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.” — John Muir
- “Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress…” — John Muir
- “God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.” — John Muir
- “One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.” — John Muir
- “Rivers flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.” — John Muir
- “Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.” — John Muir
- “How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.” — John Muir
- “Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.” — John Muir
- “One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!” — John Muir
- “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fool.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
- “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.” — John Muir
More About John Muir’s Quotes
Born on April 21, 1838, in Dunbar, Scotland, Muir’s life was an extraordinary journey that led him through some of the most fascinating expeditions into the Great Outdoors both short and long.
His two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine helped to push the US Congress to pass a bill to establish Yosemite National Park.
In 1876, Muir published many articles to encourage the government to adopt forest conservation.
His adventures in the outdoors were not just a personal pursuit but they were a quest to protect and restore the beauty of the natural world.
Conclusion
What are your favorite John Muir quotes and sayings listed above? If there is a quote that we’ve missed then let us know in the comments section what your thoughts are.
So, feel free to share with friends and family on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more to spread positive vibes.
