John Muir

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

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.

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.

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.

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.