Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

John Muir

Scottish-born American Naturalist, Writer

"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."

"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. All is divine harmony."

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

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

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

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