Muir Quotes

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

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity

The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 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.

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

One flesh, one end, bitch.

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

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

The sun shines not on us but in us.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.

John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe [Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.

Going to the mountains is going home.

But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".

Life is too short and love is too long.

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Everybody needs beauty...places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.

Harrow said, with some difficulty: "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it." "Yes you can, it's just less great and less hot," said Gideon." "Fuck you, Nav—

Going to the woods is going home.

While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.

I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.

Harrowhark said, in the exact sepulchral tones of Marshal Crux: “Death first to vultures and scavengers.

Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties

Maybe it's that I find the idea comforting...that thousands of years after you're gone...is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice is.

Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.

Her adept said: "I'll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does." Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly. "We do bones, motherfucker," she said.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

If you do not find yourself a galaxy, it is not so bad to find yourself a star.

You hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.

Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona, said Paul. Pyrrha was loved by Nona. It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.

He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, trapped in resting bitch face.

Why was I born so attractive?” “Because everyone would have throttled you within the first five minutes otherwise,

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow— WHATS WITH THE SKULLS? and received only a terse— Ambiance.

You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.

But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.

There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.

Harrow,” said Gideon, “if my heart had a dick you would kick it.

I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.

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.

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

Nothing truly wild is unclean.

When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.

You couldn’t spell obligation if I shoved the letters up your ass.” “I gotta say, I don’t think that would help,” said Gideon. “God, I’m glad you didn’t teach me my spelling.

Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.

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

On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.

Anyone can learn to fight. Hardly anyone learns to think.

Unexpectedly, this did not kill her; and what did not kill her made her curious.

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.

This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE

I must no longer accept,” she said slowly, “being a stranger to you.

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress...

Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.

Harrow said, “But you're God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.

She said, “What is this internet?” And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.

Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing

So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

I need you to trust me. I need you to be trustworthy.

Well, I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me.

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.

He was a mystery too boring to solve.

Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark.

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

My necromancer and I always liked you...and hey, what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?

She wants the D," I said. And: "The D stands for dead.

Again, let me say: sorry. It was not my thumb to let them bite off. I admit completely that this was my bad, but these motherfuckers had a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!

It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.

Harrow laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard Harrow really laugh. It was a rather weak and tired sound. "Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House," she said hoarsely, "you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph, The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.

Don't die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady." Harrow's eyes flickered open. "Stop." "I am your sworn sword, night boss." "Fine," said Harrow heavily. Gideon's mouth was about to round out the words "bone empress" before she realised what had been said.

I don't like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre', 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.

There was so much I should have told you. I just didn't have time. I didn't know. I didn't know I'd have to say: A sword doesn't hold an edge on its own, you sack of Ninth House garbage. I didn't know I'd have to say, if you dip a sword into melty bone, the metal gets more pitted than an iron mine, you cross-patched necromantic shit. I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it. Actually, scratch that, the main thing I should have said was, SQUATS ARE A START, OR A COUPLE OF STAR JUMPS, THEY'RE NOT DIFFICULT.

I'm not fucking dead," I said, which wasn't even true, and I was choking up; everything I'd ever done, everything I'd ever been through, and I was choking up. As the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the Necrolord Prime, stood from his chair to look at you-- at me; looked at your face, looked at my eyes in your face. It took, maybe, a million myriads. The static in your ears resolved into wordless screaming his expression was just--gently quizzical; mildly awed. "Hi, Not Fucking Dead," he said. "I'm Dad.

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. 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.

So Alecto, wearied of talking, kneeled upon the rock and offered up the sword to her, and placed the child’s hand upon the blade, so that it received also the red blood of the child. This made the child exceeding faint, but it did not swoon of weariness. Which strength pleased Alecto, who said: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service. To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease.

And instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back. I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.