John Burroughs quotes:

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

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

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 smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.

If you think you can do it, you can.

O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best....

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

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

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.

The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.

Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.

The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

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

I still find each day too short..

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.

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

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring!

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

There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round.

The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or crook.

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.

Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.

Literature is an investment of genius which has dividends to all subsequent times

The fuel in the earth will be exhausted in a thousand or more years, and its mineral wealth, but man will find substitutes for these in the winds, the waves, the sun's heat, and so forth.

To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes; to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures; to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration; to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables; to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.

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.

Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel...

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.

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

The kingdom of heaven in not a place but a state of mind.

The secret of happiness is something to do

I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the tree-tops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men.

Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.

[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds.

Leap, and the net will appear.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.

The only countries that are outside of [ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] are Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea withdrew in the last few years.

The Universe is a pretty big place... And the one thing I know about nature is it hates to waste anything. So I guess I'd say if it is just us, an awful lot of space is going to waste. The earth is not alone, it is not like a single apple on a tree; there are many apples on the tree, and there are many trees in the orchard.

[Invading Iraq] is not the best way to make a safer world in which the United States would be a responsible partner, but it also goes against the role of law in the United States.

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand-to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.

The budget for nuclear forces in the United States is on the order of $25 billion or so. That includes warheads, delivery systems, command and control; does not include environmental clean-up, which is another maybe $10 billion or so. So that's about 5% of the U.S. military budget.

In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

It doesn't seem to be that huge a commitment that would create, you know, some kind of really powerful constituency. But the history has been for the United States and Russia especially that nuclear weapons have kind of become part of the identity of the countries.

There tends to be this comfortable assumption that nuclear weapons won't be used, but I don't think that's warranted, and I think we should seize the opportunity of this time of stability and cooperation and move towards global elimination of nuclear weapons as indeed people like Henry Kissinger, and William Perry, former Secretary of Defense under Clinton, and Sam Nunn, former Senator, and George Schultz, former Undersecretary of State for Ronald Reagan. All of them recently called for achievement of a nuclear weapon-free world.

Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Blessed is the person who has some congenial work, some occupation in which to place one's heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces that are in him or her.

One summer day, while I was walking along the country road on the farm where I was born, a section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. Amid the general stillness and immobility about me the effect was quite startling. ... It was the sudden summing up of half a century or more of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long years, and gravity did the rest.

The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.

The art of nature is all in the direction of concealment.

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate.

We've been in a period of relative stability and cooperation since the end of the Cold War among the world's major powers, but that may not always exist. And certainly one could even predict that there will be periods of hostility or tension ahead.

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

To see Earth fully we already need to love it

Happiness comes most to persons who seek it least and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought, it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.

In fact, the United States is building up its trident nuclear sub fleet in the Pacific, based at Bangor, Washington to build up its capabilities to wage nuclear war.

I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly.

Science is a capital or fund perpetually reinvested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon, to set himself up in business with. What an enormous sum Darwin availed himself of and reinvested! Not so in literature; to every poet, to every artist, it is still the first day of creation, so far as the essentials of his task are concerned. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new-grown.

The thing that I focus on because I don't think it gets enough attention is that among the world's major powers, there is still a nuclear balance of terror - I'm talking about between the United States and Russia, the United States and China.

Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it.

Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.

The rocks have a history; gray and weatherworn, they are veterans of many battles; they have most of them marched in the ranks of vast stone brigades during the ice age; they have been torn from the hills, recruited from the mountaintops, and marshaled on the plains and in the valleys; and now the elemental war is over, there they lie waging a gentle but incessant warfare with time and slowly, oh, so slowly, yielding to its attacks!

So the idea about how detonation of a nuclear weapon might happen vary, you know - some people are especially concerned about terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and using them. Some people are worried that there might be a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Some think the Middle East, were Israel already has nuclear weapons and where other countries may be interested at some point and acquiring them, might be a flash point.

I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives - and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

Somewhat by historical happenstance the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China - also were the original five countries to have nuclear weapons.

The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.

Maybe that will happen with other countries as well. And so, that's why one of the things that groups like mine that work for the elimination of nuclear weapons and work for their marginalization in the meantime, we say you have to diminish the political value that's attached to nuclear weapons in order to give them less (kind of) desirability in the eyes of governments that do not now have them, and thus to help stop their spread.

We are made strong by what we overcome.

When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.

Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.

In 2002 the [George] Bush administration effectively put an end to negotiations of an agreement which would have established inspection procedures to ensure or to monitor compliance with the existing legal ban on biological weapons.

I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia's Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul's aspiration toward the Infinite.

The United States says "We're complying. We're following the disarmament obligation. Look at the quantitative reductions that are taking place." But, since '96, there really hasn't been progress on specific commitments that have been made. Perhaps most disturbing is this: that the United States and France in particular, since 1996, have expanded the range of circumstances under which they might use - they say they might use - nuclear weapons.

A man's life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.

The commitment to international agreements is embodied, it's found in the U.S. Constitution. Article Six of the U.S. Constitution provides that treaties of the United States are part of the supreme law of the land along with the constitution itself and laws passed by Congress. Well, the US government certainly has not been acting in recent years as if treaties were part of the supreme law of the land.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics in Nature's church; all are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do not have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, in catacombs, in garbled texts, in miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of today; it is now and here; it is everywhere.

Love is the measure of life; only so far as we love do we really live.

The place to observe nature is where you are.

The U.S. had about 10,000 nuclear warheads. It is estimated that the U.S. is heading towards having 6,000 nuclear warheads in the year 2012.

Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.

The overall quantity of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline slowly.

We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature....

Close scrutiny of an object in nature will nearly always yield some significant fact...

When you bait the hook with your heart, the fish always bite.

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking

The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.

The story goes on in the sense that at a most basic level, the United States ignored, that is violated, the United Nations charter when it invaded Iraq in 2003. This is not wise policy.

The five original nuclear weapon states I mentioned - U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia - under the NPT have committed to the achievement of the elimination of their nuclear arsenals through good faith negotiations of nuclear disarmament - that's Article Six of the treaty.

If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.

The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.

Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.

The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.

Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night.

Especially in the case of India and Pakistan, it's very clear that significant parts of the elites in both countries view having nuclear weapons as a ticket to prestige.