“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Works, VII, 17.
Context: The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy.... To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.

Source: Talks for the Times (1896), "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), p. 287

Epigraph, Ch. 3 : Man-Hunters.
Shadows of Shasta (1881)
Context: These stony altars they have hurled
Oppression back, have kept the boon
Of liberty. Behold, how free
The mountains stand, and eternally.

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. I : The Craft
Context: "Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but—"
And I was struck by the graphic image:
"But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."
And suddenly that tranquil cloud-world, that world so harmless and simple that one sees below on rising out of the clouds, took on in my eyes a new quality. That peaceful world became a pitfall. I imagined the immense white pitfall spread beneath me. Below it reigned not what one might think — not the agitation of men, not the living tumult and bustle of cities, but a silence even more absolute than in the clouds, a peace even more final. This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me.

The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)

Pat 5: The Day of Judgment; Opening sentence
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

letter to Horace Traubel around 1908; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 18
1908 - 1920

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)