I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of seeking knowledge and inspiration from books and nature to create something unique.
In this quote, John Burroughs likens his pursuit of knowledge and inspiration to a bee collecting nectar from flowers. Just as a bee transforms nectar into honey, he transforms the ideas and beauty he finds in books and nature into his own creative essence. This highlights the interconnectedness of nature, literature, and creativity, suggesting that genuine inspiration can nourish personal growth and artistic expression.
In practice
Using this quote during a book club meeting to emphasize the importance of literature.
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 is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,_x000D_ _x000D_ The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,_x000D_ _x000D_ Drops in a silent autumn night._x000D_ _x000D_ All its allotted length of days_x000D_ _x000D_ The flower ripens in its place,_x000D_ _x000D_ Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,_x000D_ _x000D_ Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
Many animals even now spring out of the soil, Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun. Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures, Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky. The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons All by themselves, and search for food and life. Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds, For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.
The mountains are calling and I must go.
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
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