# JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE QUOTE FILE

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# ADAPTION, ANIMAL, MOTHER NATURE

\"No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be, she never
allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always in the dark
and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave washed seal.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.6

"Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns-birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the
sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the
snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly."

STEEP TRAILS, pg.3

# AGE

\"As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but
Nature\'s sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers her
brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its
ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and
enlivened with bands of music ever playing.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.56

# AGGRESSIVENESS

\"\...No punishment less than death could quench the ancient inherited
belligerence burning in our pagan blood.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.29

# AIR

\"The Air was perfectly delicious, sweet enough for the breath of
angels. Every draught of it gave a separate and distinct piece of
pleasure. I do not believe that Adam and Eve tasted better in their
balmiest nook."

LETTERS TO A FRIEND, pg.38

## AGRICULTURE

\"Wildness charms not my friend\...and whatsoever may be the character
of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural
possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes and manures.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.1

\"Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call
to plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under
the savage redemption of his keen steel shares.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.1

**AGROSTIS SCABRA (Rough Hair Grass)**

THOUSAND MILE WALK, pg.59

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## ALEUTIAN FLORA, description of

CRUISE OF THE CORWIN, 1917

pgs. 10-12, 73, 88, 101,

107, 116, 133, 141, 154,

Botanical notes pg.259

## ALPENGLOW

\"Next to the light of the dawn on high mountain tops, the alpenglow is
the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.74

## ALPINE MEADOWS

\"The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie at an elevation of about
nine thousand feet, imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of
light."

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.163

# ANIMALS (FIRST ENCOUNTER, AGE 3)

\"On another memorable walk in a hayfield, when we sat down to rest on
one of the haycocks I heard a sharp, prickly, stinging cry, and, jumping
up eagerly, called grandfather\'s attention to it. He said it was only
the wind, but I insisted on digging into the hay and turning it over
until we discovered the source of the strange exciting sound- a mother
field mouse with half a dozen naked young hanging to her teats. This to
me was a wonderful discovery. No hunter could have been more excited on
discovering a bear and her cubs in a wilderness den.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.4

## ANIMALS

\"Most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being
noticed. Nevertheless we at last sadly learn that they are all subject
to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.109

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"I have always befriended animals and have said many a good word for
them. Even to the least-loved mosquitoes I gave many a meal, and told
them to go in peace."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.277

\"Of the many advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is
the gaining a real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to
respect them and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus
godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings
of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless
doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no
rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be
petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.89

**ANIMALS cont.**

"Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so
much the larger and better every way"

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.277

" Those who dwell in the wilderness are sure to learn their kinship with
animals and gain some sympathy with them, in spite of the blinding
instructions suffered in civilization."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.277

"In nothing does man with his grand notions of heaven and charity show
forth his innate low-bred animalism more clearly than his treatment of
his brother beasts."

CRUISE OF THE CORWIN, pg.143

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## ANIMALS AND FUN

\"And surely all God\'s people, however serious and savage, great or
small like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and
invisibly small mischievous microbes, -all are warm with divine radium
and must have lots of fun in them.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.149-50

## ANTHROMORPHISM

\"The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity.
The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. No wonder when
we consider that we all have the same Father and Mother.\"

MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, pg.319

\"Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if
truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. 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. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as
our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of
the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and
sings our love.\"

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.92

## ANTHROMORPHISM, nature as gardener

\"\...Nature fed them (trees) and dressed them every day,\--working like
a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and
flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing;
painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds
with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle
winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them in every fiber with
storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading
them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled
by.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.332

\"...as if Nature, like an enthusiastic gardener, could not resist the
temptation to plant flowers everywhere.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.141

## ANTHROMORPHISM, nature as gardener cont.

\"\...grand throb of Nature\'s heart, ripening late flowers and seeds
for next summer, full of life and the thoughts and plans of life to
come, and full of ripe and ready death beautiful as life, telling divine
wisdom and goodness and immortality.\"

MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, pg.320

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## ANTHROMORPHISM, favorite lily

\"C. albus, with pure white flowers, growing in shady places among the
foothill shrubs, is, I think, the very loveliest of all the lily
family,\-\--a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and
so be made better. It puts the wildest mountaineer on his good
behaviour. With this plant the whole world would seem rich though none
other existed.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.155

## ANTHROMORPHISM, plants

\"Some plants readily take on the forms and habits of society, but
generally speaking soon return to primitive simplicity and too like a
weed of cultivation feel a constant tendency to return to primitive
wildness.\"

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.90

## ANTHROMORPHISM, Snow plant\--Muir\'s least favorite plant

\"\...it is singularly unsympathetic and cold. Everybody admires
it\...but nobody loves it. \...it stands beneath the pines and firs
lonely, silent, and about as rigid as a graveyard monument.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.157

**ANTHROMORPHISM, common fern (pteris aquilina)**

\"\...they manage themselves in every exigency of weather as if they had
passed through a long course of training. I have seen solemn old sugar
pines thrown into momentary confusion by the sudden onset of a storm,
tossing their arms excitedly as if scarce awake, and wondering what had
happened, but I never noticed surprise or embarrassment in the behavior
of this noble pteris.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.150

## ANTS

\"Ants\...whose tiny sparks of life only burn the brighter with the
heat\...\"

MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, pg.11

## ARCTIC DAISY

\"\...The lovely arctic daisy with many blessed companions; charming
plants, gentle mountaineers, Nature\'s darlings, which seem always the
finer the higher and stormier their homes.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.149

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## ARTIEDA, HELEN SWETT

Helen was the youngest daughter of John and Mary Swett. She was the
constant companion of John Muir, during his stay at John Swett\'s home.
It was at this time he wrote some of his best nature stories.

SON OF THE WILDERNESS

By Linnie Marsh Wolfe

1945, Alfred Knopf, New York

Index pp. 181, 197, 205, 337

## ASPEN

At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every
leaf to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and making
them tell gloriously against the evergreens. These extensive groves of
aspen are a marked feature of the Nevada woods.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.127

## ASTERS

Liatris odoratissima

THOUSAND MILE WALK, pg.26

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## AURORAS

###  TRAVELS IN ALASKA, Chapter XIX

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## AUTOMOBILES

"...and doubtless, under certain precautionary restrictions, these
useful, progressive, blunt-nosed mechanical beetles will hereafter be
allowed to puff their way into all the parks and mingle their gas-breath
with the breath of pines and waterfalls, and, from the mountaineers
standpoint, with but little harm or good."

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN MUIR, to Howard Palmer in 1912, pg.360

## AUTUMN LIGHT

\"Most of the seeds are ripe and away, those of the trees mottling the
sunny air, glinting, glancing through the midst of the merry insect
people, rocks and trees, everything alike drenched in gold light,
heaven\'s colors coming down to the meadows and groves, making every
leaf a romance, air, earth, and water in peace beyond thought, the great
brooding days opening and closing in divine psalms of color.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.283

## AVALANCHE

\"When the snow first gives way on the upper slopes of their basins a
dull muffled rush and rumble is heard, which increasing with heavy
deliberation, seems to draw rapidly near with appalling intensity of
tone. Presently the white flood comes in sight bounding out over bosses
and sheer places, leaping from bench to bench, spreading and narrowing
and throwing off clouds of whirling diamond dust like a majestic foamy
cataract.\"

THE YOSEMITE, pg.47

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## AVALANCHES, MUIR CAUGHT IN

\"This flight in a Milky Way of snow flowers was the most spiritual of
all my travels; and, after many years, the mere thought of it is still
an exhilaration.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.255

**AVALANCHES, COMPARED TO WATERFALLS**

"Compared with cascades and falls, avalanches are short-lived, few of
them lasting more than a minute or two, and the sharp clashing sounds so
common in dashing water are usually wanting; but in their low massy
thunder-tones and purple-tinged whiteness, and in their dress, gait,
gestures, and general behavior, they are much alike."

THE YOSEMITE, pg.47-8