It is good that fire should burn, even if it consumes your house; it is good that force should crush, even if it crushes you; it is good that rain should fall, even if it destroys your crops and floods your land. Plagues and pestilences attest to the constancy of natural law. They set us to cleaning our streets and houses and to readjusting our relations to outward nature. Only in a live universe could disease and death prevail. Death is a phase of life, a redistributing of the type. Decay is another kind of growth.

About John Burroughs

John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871.

More quotations from John Burroughs

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

—John Burroughs

The secret of happiness is something to do.

—John Burroughs

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

—John Burroughs

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The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

—John Burroughs

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The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

—John Burroughs

birds

More quotations tagged with “sickness”

Feed a fever, starve a cold. Lightly sup with rickets.

—Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

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No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.

—Djuna Barnes

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I thought I wanted his love, but really I wanted his pity. I wanted to quit. But he wouldn't let me. "A good doctor can cure your illness, but only the greatest doctor can show you you were never sick," Roshi has said.

—Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk

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Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner, but you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead.

—Louis Armstrong

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It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.

—Jackie Mason

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