Browse 7 quotations connecting John Muir with Present Moment, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include My First Summer in the Sierra, Travels in Alaska, Our National Parks. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include My First Summer in the Sierra, Travels in Alaska, Our National Parks.
“How interesting everything is!”
Wonder becomes a method of attention: rocks, streams, plants, and animals all become invitations to learn rather than background scenery.
Source note: My First Summer in the Sierra, near the close of the summer journal.
“This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
Muir describes freedom as absorption in immediate natural experience, where ordinary anxiety about saving time temporarily loses its force.
Source note: My First Summer in the Sierra, June 13; the sentence follows his reflection on not hurrying like the trees and stars.
“Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars.”
Immersion in the mountains changes the felt pressure of time, replacing hurry with attention to rhythms that do not follow human schedules.
Source note: My First Summer in the Sierra, June 13 journal entry.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
Muir presents mountain experience as something that can restore perspective and emotional steadiness through direct contact with wild landscapes.
Source note: Our National Parks; Muir follows the invitation with an account of nature’s peace flowing into the observer, linking mountains with restoration and attention.
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”
The exclamation turns sunrise into an event worth deliberate attention, expressing Muir’s habit of treating ordinary natural processes as occasions for wonder.
Source note: The Mountains of California, in a passage describing morning light on the mountains.
“All the world seemed new-born.”
Intense attention can make familiar surroundings feel newly encountered, turning an ordinary moment into a renewed experience of landscape and life.
Source note: Travels in Alaska, mountain excursion near the Stickeen; Muir describes the effect of evening light after a strenuous day.
“Every thing, even the commonest, was seen in new light and was looked at with new interest as if never seen before.”
Attention changes the value of familiar things; novelty can come not from a new object but from seeing an ordinary one with renewed interest.
Source note: Travels in Alaska, same Stickeen excursion; the sentence follows Muir’s description of the world seeming newly born.