John Burroughs Quotes

We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest star and see infinite space beyond.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Infinity is a way to describe the incomprehensible to the human mind. In a way, it notates a mystery. That kind of mystery exists in relationships. A lifetime is not enough to know someone else. It provides a brief glimpse.

The future is wider than vision, and has no end.

All things are infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small also is infinite. And when they are all together, the parts are not clear and distinct because of their smallness

The vastness of Russia devours us.

There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.

Infinity is almost impossible for an eight-year-old to grasp. It's an inquiring age, and you're beginning to shape your thoughts and questions about life in general at that stage.

There is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.

Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

I think the end is endless. It's either a big black hole or a big white light or both together. But it's totally meaningless, because even if someone would explain it, I wouldn't understand it.

I don't believe you can say 'forever'; I don't believe it exists.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

Not to be limited by the greatest and yet to be contained in the tiniest—this is the divine

The world and that which, by another name, men have thought good to call Heaven (under the compass of which all things are covered), we ought to believe, in all reason, to be a divine power, eternal, immense, without beginning, and never to perish.

Age don't count in the booth.