John Burroughs Quotes

I was sat at the bottom of the garden a week ago, smoking a reflective cheroot, thinking about this and that - mostly that, and I just happened to glance at the night sky and I marvelled at the millions of stars glistening like pieces of quicksilver thrown carelessly onto black velvet. In awe I watched the waxen moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an amber chariot towards the void of infinite space wherein the tethered bolts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever in their orbital majesty; and as I looked at all this, I thought, 'I must put a roof on this lavatory.

I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.

Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness.

Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.

I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens.

And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

The first stars tremble as if shimmering in green water. Hours must pass before their glimmer hardens into the frozen glitter of diamonds. I shall have a long wait before I witness the soundless frolic of the shooting stars. In the profound darkness of certain nights I have seen the sky streaked with so many trailing sparks that it seemed to me a great gale must be blowing through the outer heavens.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

When man has come to the Turnstiles of Night, all the creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colorless.

The piece of equipment I'm most found off is my telescope. The other night I had a superb view of the moon.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night-- Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about The other four in wondrous motion.

There is no light in earth or heaven but the cold light of stars; and the first watch of night is given to the red planet Mars.

The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing-Oh, make haste!

Stargazing is one of the most profoundly human things one can do. But perhaps we must more frequently tear ourselves away from the mystery and beauty of the starry heavens above, and rather inspect, admire and foster the moral law within.

Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.

The moon is quite a show off given the chance. The stars make a sound when they shine so bright. Water so blue and so black.

Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God - such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing

But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along with them,-though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,-that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.