Quotes about mountains
page 2

“I am so afraid of people's words.
They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder
In Celebration of Me (1909)

People, Dogs, Housing

“Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. 'Mostly by one country badly offending another,' answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. 'A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.' 'Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?' growls Kropp. 'I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other—' 'Then I haven't any business here at all,' replies Tjaden, 'I don't feel myself offended.' 'Well, let me tell you,' says Albert sourly,' it doesn't apply to tramps like you.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

'Then I can be going home right away,' retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh.
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 9

War, People, Stupidity, Feeling

“Down the mountain walls
From where pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

News for the Delphic Oracle http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1546/, st. 3 Last Poems (1936-1939)

Music, Appearance

“Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

“If I should do so now it occurs that he places himself somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the one that was lost and threw it upon his shoulders, and came home rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and nine in the fold. The application is made by the Saviour in this parable thus: Verily I say unto you, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Repentance before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness. Regarding his debate with Judge S. A. Douglas, in his Springfield address (17 July 1858), published in The Life, Speeches, and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln: Together with a Sketch of the Life of Hannibal Hamlin: Republican candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States (1860), p. 50 Lincoln was alluding to the words of Jesus in Luke 15:7 http://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Luke%2015%3A7 1850s

Home, Forgiveness, Personality

“There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 18.

Men, God, Strong

“You know that in an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therfore you should make the building… wall which is more distant less defined and bluer. …five times as far away make five times as blue.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Distant, Appearance, Time

“The cold winds sweeping the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ’mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press’d,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.”

Seba Smith (1792–1868) American humorist

The Snow Storm.

Sleep, Night

“Nothing must disturb my undiluted Englishry — God Save The King! I am naturally a Nordic — a chalk-white, bulky Teuton of the Scandinavian or North-German forests — a Vikinga berserk killer — a predatory rover of Hengist and Horsa — a conqueror of Celts and mongrels and founders of Empires — a son of the thunders and the arctic winds, and brother to the frosts and the auroras — a drinker of foemen's blood from new picked skulls — a friend of the mountain buzzards and feeder of seacoast vultures — a blond beast of eternal snows and frozen oceans — a prayer to Odin and Thor and Woden and Alfadur, the raucous shouter of Niffelheim — a comrade of the wolves, and rider of nightmares — aye — I speak truly — for was I not born with yellow hair and blue eyes.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (3 May 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 227
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

God, Nature

“As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal,… a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Kurd in Turkey, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

" The Majority Disguised as the Resented Minority http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/16118" (31 May 1994)

“One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), pp. 140–141

Life, People, World, Way

“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied, —
"If you seek for Eldorado!”

Edgar Allan Poe Eldorado

"Eldorado", st. 4.

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths, — all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act II, sc. iv
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)

Faith, Religion, Beauty, Intelligence

“I am an artist who makes walks. A walk defines the form of the land in space and time beyond the scale of sculpture or the fixed image. Some of my walks are formal (straight, circular, rhythmic) almost ritualised. I have climbed around mountains instead of to the top, I have made walks about slowness, walks about stones and water. I have made walks within a place as opposed to a linear journey; walking without travelling.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long (1980), five, six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight, London: Anthony D'Offay Gallery
1980s

Travel, Water, Time

“I believe in God. … There is no way you can be up here [in the Rocky Mountains] and think that there isn't a God.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Exclusive from His Telluride Home: The Tom Cruise Interview (May 29, 2008)

God, Way, Thinking

“But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, pp. 147–8
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Women, Men, Secret, Nature

“I followed them with my eyes going through life, which would be nothing to them but fields, mountains, or forests. I saw them veiled in a kind of light, sheltered from darkness, protected for a time against the fearful spell of memory and thought.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XV

Life, Fear, Light, Memory

“With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.

World, Faith, Justice, Beauty

“The surrounding forest, as though in a mist,
Was blue in the powder of smoke.
But there, far off, in a disordered ridge,
Which was yet eternally proud and calm,
Stretched the mountains — and Kazbek
Gleamed with its sharp peak.
And with secret, heartfelt sorrow
I thought: 'Pitiable man.
What does he want! The sky is clear,
Beneath it there is much room for all,
But constantly and vainly
He alone wages war — why?”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"I am writing to you..." (1840)
Poems

War, Secret

“I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.
It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa?
More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?
Me, actually — the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.
It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.
I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.

Intelligence, Thinking, Sense, Universe

“And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3 The Rose (1893) Context: p>When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p

Love, Star

“My Beloved is the mountains,
The solitary wooded valleys,
The strange islands,
The roaring torrents,
The whisper of the amorous gales;
The tranquil night
At the approaches of the dawn,
The silent music,
The murmuring solitude,
The supper which revives, and enkindles love. ~ 14 & 15”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

Love, Music, Solitude, Night

“Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Thy beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom
Context: Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Thy beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket. ~ 36

Beauty, Water

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Way, Past, Future

“On the mountains there is freedom!
The world is perfect everywhere,
Save where man comes with his torment.”

Friedrich Schiller The Bride of Messina

Die Braut von Messina (The Bride of Messina), Act IV, sc. vii (1803)

Freedom

“In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers. ~ 3”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

Love, Fear, Search, Flowers

“And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Context: p>Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day -- that change does not come from Washington, but to Washington; that change has always been built on our willingness, We The People, to take on the mantle of citizenship -- you are marching.And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.</p

Love, God, People, Faith

“It seems to me that inspiration theoretically enhances one’s ability traversing difficulties as they move toward a goal. The highly inspired, encounter less obstacles and traverse mountains easier than others on their path through life. They appear to view roadblocks and detours as normal life events and in many cases move through them unscathed and undeterred. While the obstacles exist as they would for anyone else, they don’t view them in the same manner.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

Life, Appearance

“Indeed, you should not desire to weigh with the intellect the issues of Tawhīd and the Hereafter; the reality of Prophethood; the reality of divine attributes and every other thing beyond the scope of the intellect, for such a desire is futile. An example of this would be a man who has a scale used for weighing gold suddenly desiring to weigh mountains with it! This does not mean that the scale is wrong in its measures; rather, the intellect has a limit it cannot surpass and a boundary it cannot transcend.”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

As quoted in Muḥammad Ramaḍān al-Ramaḍānī, ' The Delusion of Portraying the Aḥadīth as Being Contradictory to the Intellect and Sense Perception https://www.academia.edu/41143364/The_Delusion_of_Portraying_the_A%E1%B8%A5ad%C4%ABth_as_Being_Contradictory_to_the_Intellect_and_Sense_Perception_by_Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_Rama%E1%B8%8D%C4%81n_al-Rama%E1%B8%8D%C4%81n%C4%AB?fbclid=IwAR2ADVWT4gR0yhH0NVxpUj7ME1qU9nQu1QnCcy8zmrfb5rXkJlatb24aCrw'

Reality

“Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 14

Law

“Happiness is such a fleeting point of view—there’s no such thing as continual happiness. There are only moments of happiness—from contentment to ecstasy. And if by happiness you mean ecstasy … Yes, I’ve known ecstasy, and it’s a blessing to be able to say it because those who can say it are very few. But ecstasy doesn’t last long and is seldom ever repeated. If by happiness you mean an ordinary contentment, then yes—I’m fairly contented. Not satisfied—contented. Satisfied is a word I use only in reference to my country, and I’ll never be satisfied for my country. For this reason I go on taking difficult paths, and between a paved road and a footpath that goes up the mountain, I choose the footpath. To the great irritation of my bodyguards.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, February 1972

Happiness, Country

“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2H_4_0002 Christian Science (1907)

Bad luck, Family, Art, Cars

“For the greater part of its course the river Drina flows through narrow gorges between steep mountains or through deep ravines with precipitous banks. In a few places only the river banks spread out to form valleys with level or rolling stretches of fertile land suitable for cultivation and settlement on both sides.”

Ivo Andrič book The Bridge on the Drina

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 1, first lines

Parting

“When beset with doubt in troubled times, and those about you will understand if you come unglued, stay the ground, and face the challenge. For when you stand alone to confront life's highest mountains, the next shall be easier to climb.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1972

Life, Understanding, Time

“Nine hundred feet below my cave rhododendrons blossomed. I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes... Solitude, solitude! ...Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Magic And Mystery In Tibet

Life, Sense, Solitude

“There is a high goal, a mountain peak, a star that shines in the darkness, beckoning above the horizon. Its mere existence gives you hope—and that is the meaning without which you cannot live.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 133

Hope, Star

“Ray, what you got to do is go climb a mountain…”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“Range after range of mountains.
Year after year after year.
I am still in love.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Love

“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library

Imagination, Idea, Memory

“So this is what it's about? This is your mature response to go off into the mountains rather than talking about it and have s'mores with a gnome and a mountain man."
"Yep"
"What's your plan for tomorrow? Brunch with a unicorn?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

“Isn't man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting?”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

God, Star, Sea

“One must look at the next step on the path ahead, rather than the mountain in the distance, or one would never reach one's goal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. … The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Yellowstone National Park http://books.google.com/books?id=smQCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA509", The Atlantic Monthly, volume LXXXI, number 486 (April 1898) pages 509-522 (at pages 515-516); modified slightly and reprinted in Our National Parks http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/ (1901), chapter 2: The Yellowstone National Park 1900s, Our National Parks (1901)

Age, Fear, Peace, Autumn

“A faith that moves mountains is a faith that expands horizons, it does not bring us into a smaller world full of easy answers, but into a larger one where there is room for wonder.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

World, Faith

“Never underestimate the power of funny, it moves mountains.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Personality

“No one has to know. No one would. It would be her secret, one she would share with the mountains only. The question is whether it is a secret she can live with, and Parwana thinks she knows the answer. She has lived with secrets all her life.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Life, Secret, Question, Thinking

“Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!”

Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968) Poet

Source: The Poems of Dorothea Mackellar

Love, Beauty, Sea, Country

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20
Context: Zen is the "spirit of the valley." The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

“This mountain of a man was learning that his considerable might- which he'd clearly relied on for- was futile with her.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Learning

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream

Faith, Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Beauty, Peaceful

“Uh, Magnus has a boyfriend,” said Simon.

There was a frightening glint in Julie’s eye. “There are some mountains you still want to climb, even though there are ‘No Trespassing’ signs up.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

“You're off to great places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990)
Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Way, Waiting

“Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 5: The Passes 
Context: Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

World, Fear, Home

“All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.”

Kiran Desai book The Inheritance of Loss

Source: The Inheritance of Loss

Color, Water

“Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don't know it and feel safe.”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

Source: The Periodic Table

Feeling

“I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World (2001): 2001 Gift Edition

Effort

“One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1872(?), page 95
John of the Mountains, 1938

Books, Soul, Nature

“We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess--across the night…”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Madness, Night

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

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“Leo: "So… giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the best time to bring up my psycho babysitter."
Piper: "Is that another joke?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Drink, Evil, Time

“I don't see that we have much choice," I said, "since we don't have anyone who can grow wings."
"I will push you off this mountain," Sam warned.
"All right," Blitzen decided, "let's try it. I mean the rune, not pushing Magnus off the mountain.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

“You don't need to climb a mountain to know that it's high.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

“You know I can’t go out there. There’s daylight outside. (Ravyn)
Well, that’s what happens when the big yellow ball comes up over the mountains. Amazing isn’t it? (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

“Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“Because the moment you stop doing the very things that got you to the top of the mountain is the very moment you begin the slid down to the valley.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 195
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

“Such was a poet and shall be and is
-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Life, Despair

“These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley  1910s Context: These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

God, Nature, Perfection