John Burroughs

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

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

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

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.

In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom.

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.

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.

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or muffled and is heard but a few yards. It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its bark, that he beats his reveille to spring and wooes his mate.

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.

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.

To find the universal elements enough to find the air and the water exhilarating to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.

The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to be disposed of, they starve her to death, and the queen herself will sting nothing but royalty, nothing but a rival queen.

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.

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