John Muir Tree Quotations

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.

Yosemite Park... 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.

The bat­tle we have fought, and are still fight­ing for the forests is a part of the eter­nal con­flict between right and wrong, and we can­not expect to see the end of it. …So we must count on watch­ing and striv­ing for these trees, and should always be glad to find any­thing so surely good and noble to strive for.

I never saw a discontented tree.

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.

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts . . .

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

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

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

Any fool can destroy trees, they cannot run away.

God cannot save them from fools.

Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old.

Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.

Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed.

I have enjoyed the trees & scenery of KY exceedingly. How shall I ever tell of the miles & miles of beauty that have been flowing into me in such measure?

In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others

It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these western woods ... Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time-and long before that-God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools.

No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

The Big Tree is Nature's forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.

When a man plants a tree, he plants himself.

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong.