4 quotations linked to Travels in Alaska by or associated with John Muir, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“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.
“The whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”
A shift from isolated scenery to the whole globe enlarges beauty into a cosmic idea, connecting landscape observation with a sense of shared motion and scale.
Source note: Travels in Alaska, early sea voyage; Muir moves from ocean scenery to imagining the globe and stars together.
“And here, too, one learns that the world, though made, is yet being made.”
Landscape is presented as an ongoing process rather than a finished backdrop, with glaciers, rivers, soil, and future ecosystems continuously reshaping one another.
Source note: Travels in Alaska, exploration of the Stickeen glaciers; Muir describes glacial processes as continuing creation.
“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.