Quotes about mountains
page 6

“Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden. So with the mouths of the Alabama and Mississippi river. Just as the products of the interior, our cotton, wheat, corn, and other articles, have to bear the necessary rates of freight over our railroads to reach the seas. This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and justice, and it is especially set forth and established in our new constitution.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Money, Hostility, People, World

“A structure-less painting is, to me, a painting that does not matter. Structure mirrors your degree of responsibility toward the work. You can’t just let it float around in pretty colors. It needs a kind of core. But this is an inner structure. It does correspond to being a geologist — the metaphor may be trite, but it works. Like when you see these breathtaking mountains in strange colors in eastern Greenland. As a geologist, you want to know what exactly they’re doing.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

1995 and later, interview in Kirkeby’s home studio, Copenhagen (2012)

Color, Painting

“Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (February 4, 1925)
Letters

Sea

“When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man’s passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted— as easily as his mood. Dorothea’s entrance was the freshness of morning.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World, Soul, Imagination, Mood

“A handful of types of elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence and swarm in space even when it seems that there is nothing there, combine together to infinity like the letters of a cosmic alphabet to tell the immense history of galaxies, of the innumerable stars, of sunlight, of mountains, woods and fields of grain, of the smiling faces of the young at parties, and of the night sky studded with stars.”

Carlo Rovelli (1956) Italian physicist

Source: Seven Brief Lectures on Physics (2014), p. 34

Smile, History, Star, Night

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men, Hell, Drink, Question

“Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.
This arrival in the wild country of the soul,
All approaches gone, being completely there,
Where the wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra
Hums and you say "The world in a verse,A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,"
After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Arrival at the Waldorf"
Parts of a World (1942)

Love, Women, Men, World

“Blindfold I walk this life's bewildering maze;
Up flinty steep, through frozen mountain pass,
Through thornset barren and through deep morass:
But strong in faith I tread the uneven ways,
And bare my head unshrinking to the blast,
Because my Father's arm is round me cast;
And if the way seems rough, I only clasp
The hand that leads me with a firmer grasp.”

Anne Lynch Botta (1815–1891) writer, poet, socialite

Faith

Life, Faith, Way, Strong

“Art is an adventure. When it ceases to be an adventure, it ceases to be art. Not all of us pursue the inaccessible landscapes of the twelve-tone scale, just as not all of us strive for inaccessible mountain-tops, or glory in storms at sea. But the human incidence is there. Could it be that these two impractical pursuits - of beauty and of adventure’s embrace - are simply two differing profiles of the same uniquely human reality?”

Robert Ardrey book The Hunting Hypothesis

The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976)

Beauty, Art, Reality, Sea

“It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

As quoted in Plans, Sections and Elevations : Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century (2004) by Richard Weston Variant translations: It is not the right angle that attracts me, Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made. What attracts me are free and sensual curves. The curves in my country’s mountains, In the sinuous flow of its rivers, In the beloved woman’s body. As quoted in "Architect of Optimism" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db740a7a-e897-11db-b2c3-000b5df10621.html?nclick_check=1, Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times (2007-04-13) It is not the right angle that attracts me. nor the straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. what attracts me is the free, sensual curve. the curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the clouds of the sky, in the body of the favourite woman. Of curves is made all the universe. As quoted on a Photo page on the Museum of Contemporary Art over Baia da Guanabara http://app.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/122423/?nextnav=favs&navuser=1

Country

“After seven years of marriage,
He wanted out.
Now after seven months of freedom,
It's clear that there's no doubt.She's gonna make it,
And he never will.
He's at the foot of the mountain,
And she's over that hill.
He's sinkin' at sea,
And her sails are filled.
She's gonna make it,
And he never will.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

She's Gonna Make It, written by Kent Blazy, Kim Williams, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Marriage, Freedom, Sea

“Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.”

Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) American historian and biographer

Los Angeles Times Home Magazine (Feb. 20, 1977)

Cooking

“She put snow on the mountain's / peak for me and took the Gallup Poll of my imagination. / She is both the V-Hold and popular fiction of my life. I write / her letters daily, which I'm then prompted to discard. She / engineered several corporate mergers until I couldn't resist / temptation.”

Carson Cistulli (1979) American poet and writer

A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)

Life, Imagination

“Since so little is known about the early Macedonians, it is hardly strange that in both ancient and modern times there has been much disagreement on their ethnic identity. The Greeks in general and Demosthenes in particular looked upon them as barbarians, that is, not Greek. Modern scholarship, after many generations of argument, now almost unanimously recognises them as Greeks, a branch of the Dorians and ‘NorthWest Greeks’ who, after long residence in the north Pindus region, migrated eastwards. The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the Dorians. During their sojourn in the Pindus complex and the long struggle to found a kingdom, however, the Macedonians fought and mingled constantly with Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, and probably various Greek tribes. Their language naturally acquired many Illyrian and Thracian loanwords, and some of their customs were surely influenced by their neighbours[…] To the civilised Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries, the Macedonian way of life must have seemed crude and primitive. This backwardness in culture was mainly the result of geographical factors. The Greeks, who had proceeded south in the second millennium, were affected by the many civilising influences of the Mediterranean world, and ultimately they developed that very civilising institution, the polis. The Macedonians, on the other hand, remained in the north and living for centuries in mountainous areas, fighting with Illyrians, Thracians, and amongst themselves as tribe fought tribe, developed a society that may be termed Homeric. The amenities of city-state life were unknown until they began to take root in Lower Macedonia from the end of the fifth century onwards.”

John V.A. Fine (1903–1987) American historian

"The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History", Harvard University Press, 1983, pgs 605-608

Life, God, People, World

“out of the mountain of his soul
comes a keen pure silence”

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

19
XAIPE (1950)

Soul, Silence

“Cloud-made mountains towered,
Beckoning to me;
Visionary triremes
Talked about the sea…”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)

Sea

“The enemy have possession of Fort Independence, on the heights above King's Bridge. They made their appearance the night before last. We had got every thing of value away. The bridges are cut down, and I gave Colonel Magaw orders to stop the road between the mountains.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Appearance, Night

“A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels. Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer. It's as if the whole of winter has drained through that white hole — a concentration of winter.”

Andy Goldsworthy (1956) British sculptor and photographer

Interview with Conrad Bodman, curator at the Barbican Arts Centre (2001)

Feeling, Idea, Winter, Summer

“The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever, The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun. (Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 186–187
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

God, Age, Fools, Art

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear — O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant land.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Prefatory Poem
1800s, Milton (c. 1809)

God, Sleep, Time, Fight

“That's why I'm going to Katmandu,
Up to the mountains where I'm going to.
If I ever get out of here,
That's what I'm gonna do.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Katmandu.
Song lyrics, Beautiful Loser (1975)

“Today there are no trees at the South Pole. 70% of the earth today is underwater. Do you know that only 3% of this earth is habitable for mankind! A lot of it is under desert, ice caps, tundra, mountain ranges nobody can live on. Three percent is habitable. What we're seeing today is not what Adam and Eve saw. The Bible says that He formed it to be inhabited. That's why He did it! Probably the pre-Flood world was (I would be just picking a number) and say probably 80% land, and only 20% water. The oceans weren't there! The water was in the crust of the earth or in the canopy overhead. But there were trees from pole to pole before the Flood came. This layer of water above the earth would act as a barrier that would block out UV light and X-rays and other harmful things that come from the sun. You see, the sun produces a lot of stuff besides light. It produces X-rays and gamma rays and beta rays; and all them "ray-boys" come down here! And they're pretty hard on your carcass.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

World, Boy, Tree, Light

“Owen believed in common archetypes rather than a common ancestor, and his conduct presents an archetype of the modern creation scientists, except that they submit to peer review rarely, (if ever) and none of them are experts in anything. They’ve never produced any research indicative of their position. They cannot substantiate any of their assertions, and they’ve never successfully refuted anyone else’s hypotheses either. But every argument of evidence they’ve ever made in favor of creation has been refuted immediately and repeatedly. All they’ve ever been able to do was criticize real science, and even then the absolute best arguments they’ve ever come up with were all disproved in a court of law with mountains of research standing against their every allegation. Yet creationists still use those same ridiculous rationalizations because they will never accept where their beliefs are in error! Their only notable strength is how anyone can be so consistently proven to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, 100% of the time, for such a long time, and still make-believe theirs is the absolute truth. More amazing still is how often they will actually lie in defense of their alleged truth. Every publication promoting creation over any avenue of actual science contains misquotes, misdefinitions, and misrepresented misinformation, while their every appeal to reason is based entirely on erroneous assumptions and logical fallacies. There is a madness to their method, but it is naught but propaganda.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Truth, Lie, Law, Error

“It's in the fight, in the striving, in the mountains unclimbed that fulfillment lies, so if you have nothing to strive for, you have nothing to make you happy. When it comes to "for better" or "for worse," "for better" is often harder on a marriage.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Marriage, Happiness, Fight

“I owned the world that hour as I rode over it… free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

On flying over the Rocky Mountains, as quoted in Lindbergh (1978) by Leonard Mosley

World

“On the day / While closing my eyes in the mist of the sacred temple / I suddenly heard / The true world of your prayer
In that month / I turned around all the prayer wheels / Not for the purpose of purification / But for caressing your finger tips
In that year / I knocked my head for a long time on the mountain path / Not for the purpose of pilgrimage / But for pressing near the warmth of your body
During that life / I turned around mountains, rivers, and Buddhist towers / Not for seeking after a better future life / But for meeting you on the way”

He Xuntian (1953) Chinese musician

Believer

Life, World, Way, Time

“The invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills. The fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists. The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts. The lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look benignly down upon them saying, "Little children, love one another."”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 41 : Learning To Forget

Love, Life, Happiness, Children

“… I have been very fond of Jason ever since the time when I was putting human charity on trial and as he came home from the chase he met me at the mouth of the Anaurus. The river was in spate, for all the mountains and their high spurs were under snow and cataracts were roaring down their sides. I was disguised as an old woman and he took pity on me, lifted me up, and carried me across the flood on his shoulders. For that, I will never cease to honour him.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 66–74; spoken by Hera.

Home, Time

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn't be tainted.”

Ross Macdonald book The Drowning Pool

The Drowning Pool (1952)

“Barriers of sea, or desert, or mountain, could never have been of the least avail, had the creative force acted independently of material laws, or had it not pleased the Author of Nature that the origin of new species should be governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very closely resembling them.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 423

Law, Nature, Parent, Appearance

“When I first came up with the lines, I don't know what it is, but you got to do it/ I don't know where to go but you got to be there, I was at this party for The Strokes in New York. There was this prevailing sense of, 'We're not quite sure what's happening or what is cool, but we know that it's somewhere around here, in this room.' It was this vague confusion, with everybody kind of sniffing for blood. It wasn't that it was a bad party, or that I don't like The Strokes; I just think there's a lot of confusion right now in the music business. Then, later on, I realized the song was really personal. I didn't know where I was, and I didn't know I was actually lost. It wasn't about the party at all; it's about searching but not knowing what you're searching for. There's the train motif, being on this train heading for either oblivion or salvation – and just holding on for dear life. That song came down from some mountain somewhere, because it was right after I wrote it that I sort of packed it in.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

About I Don't Know What It Is,

Life, Music, Search, Business

“It's like having 100 kg put over you. After that, even if you put a mountain, it will not make any difference.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Captain Cool. That's the name we've given him because of the ease with which he seems to cope with pressure. Here's his take on handling the hopes of 1.2 billion people. https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/ms-dhoni/

“The yellow sand rises as high as white cloud;
The lonely town is lost amid the mountains proud.
Why should the Mongol flute complain no willows grow?
Beyond the Jade Gate vernal wind will never blow!”

Wang Zhihuan (688–742) Chinese poet

"Out Of The Great Wall" (《出塞》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

“There is something human beings can do. "The adrenaline rush," we call it. Fear, tremendous love. When people kill themselves, commit suicide over love, that kind of passion will move mountains.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Academy of Achievement interview (2006)

Love, People, Fear, Suicide

“If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch.”

Robert D. Richardson (1934) American historian

Source: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process (2009), p. 19

Life, Reading

“I also think living in the country gives you faith. All you have to do is get up and look at the mountains and look at the other animals to realize that your problems are mostly made up or exacerbated by humans. But human life isn't necessarily life. There's so much more out there.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Interview in OutSmart magazine https://web.archive.org/web/20080727021104/http://home.houston.rr.com/blase/Root%20Folder/ritamae.html (January 1998)

Life, Faith, Problem, Thinking

“I am a bird from mountains you don't know.
My throat feels itchy—so I start to chirp
when sings the morning wind among the leaves,
when dreams the moon at midnight in the blue.
Perched on a branch, the bird longs for its brook—
it will break into song and not know why.
Its ditties cannot make the fruits grow ripe;
its carols cannot help the flowers bloom.
It's profitless to sing, and yet the bird
will burst its throat and heart to sing its best.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Foreword to a book of poems", in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0300064100

Dreams, Feeling, Flowers, Bird

“Our planet, the Earth, is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. It contains life. Even in its most barren stretches, there are animals. Around the equator, where those two essentials for life, sunshine and moisture, are most abundant, great forests grow. And here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers that we still have not even named all the different species. Here, animals and plants, insects and birds, mammals and man live together in intimate and complex communities, each dependent on one another. Two thirds of the surface of this unique planet are covered by water, and it was here indeed that life began. From the oceans, it has spread even to the summits of the highest mountains as animals and plants have responded to the changing face of the Earth.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Opening narration
The Living Planet (1984)

Life, Communication, Bird, Universe

“Meanwhile Medea, though she was singing and dancing with her maids, could think of one thing only. There was no melody, however gay, that did not quickly cease to please. Time and again she faltered and came to a halt. To keep her eyes fixed on her choir was more than she could do. She was for ever turning them aside to search the distant paths, and more than once she well-nigh fainted when she mistook the noise of the wind for the footfall of a passer-by. But it was not so very long before the sight of Jason rewarded her impatient watch. Like Sirius rising from Ocean, brilliant and beautiful but full of menace for the flocks, he sprang into view, splendid to look at but fraught with trouble for the lovesick girl. Her heart stood still, a mist descended on her eyes, and a warm flush spread across her cheeks. She could neither move towards him nor retreat; her feet were rooted to the ground. And now her servants disappeared, and the pair of them stood face to face without a word or sound, like oaks or tall pines that stand in the mountains side by side in silence when the air is still, but when the wind has stirred them chatter without end. So these two, stirred by the breath of Love, were soon to pour out all their tale.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 948–972

Love, Beauty, Search, Girl

“The most distant mountains, like himself, just stood there and gazed.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

Distant

“Nature also gives rain and drought, heat and cold; and thoughtfully ensures that the rain rots man’s food, the drought parches it, the heat scalds man’s body, and the cold freezes his limbs.
These are only nature’s milder aspects, not to be compared to the wrathfulness of the sea, the frigid indifference of the mountains, the treachery of the swamp, the depravity of the desert, or the terror of the jungle. But I noticed that nature, in her hatred of mankind, provided that most of the earth’s surface be covered with sea, mountains, swamp, desert, and jungle.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three #505justice Truck Drivers” (pp. 44-45)

Food, Nature, Sea, Indifference

“You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That’s what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen’s wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can’t say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can’t the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn’t want Lot’s wife to look back, why didn’t he make her obedient, so she’d do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn’t made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would’ve listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He’s not good at design, he’s not good at execution. He’d be out of business if there was any competition.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 16 (p. 285)

God, Children, People, Way

“I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps. …I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton. … in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14 (16 September 1902)

Pleasure, Beauty, Feeling, Sea

“"Thank you for splitting. I guess we'd all better get on with it."
"Indeed," said Dame Quarto.
"We had," added Dame Septum. She raised her hand and dramatically announced, "I shall attend to the Middle House!"
"And I to the mountains!" declared Dame Quarto, and both strode from the room.
"And I to… sorting our Superior Saturday," said Arthur. Somehow it didn't sound the same.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Superior Saturday (2008), p. 106.

Housing

“When you are walking up a mountain to attempt something that nobody’s ever tried before, and you pass people bringing corpses down, it becomes very clear that if you get it wrong, the consequences could be fatal.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 234, describing his swim on Mt Everest (2010)
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)

People

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness, Dreams, Disappointment, Home

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. … I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 130-132.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Death, God, Fear, Exercises

“Heaven & earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation; were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountaines, hils, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running most pleasantly into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitfull and delightsome land.”

John Smith (explorer) (1580–1631) Admiral of New England, was an English soldier, explorer, and author

Describing the countryside around Chesapeake Bay (1606); reported in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (1907), vol. 2, pp. 44–45.

People

“All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead,
The Mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;
The little Birds in dreams their Songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers, beneath the night-dew sweat;
Even Lust and Envy sleep.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

The Indian Emperor (1667), Act III, scene ii.

Dreams, Flowers, Nature, Bird

“In whatever light we view religion it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature — the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious devotion.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 493.

Religion, Smile, Beauty, Hope

“The sun along the mountain bows,
the Yellow River seawards flows.
You will enjoy a grander sight
by climbing to a greater height.”

Wang Zhihuan (688–742) Chinese poet

"On the Stork Tower" (《登鹳雀楼》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

Sun

“To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the mediaeval knights who travelled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then… I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Women, Men, Hate, Travel

“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro," first published in Esquire (August 1936); later published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)

God, Housing

“A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished even before lunch.”

Fred Allen (1894–1956) comedian

Treadmill to Oblivion http://books.google.com/books?id=8IC6ZSGPAAYC&q=&quot;A+molehill+man+is+a+pseudo+busy+executive+who+comes+to+work+at+9+am+and+finds+a+molehill+on+his+desk+He+has+until+5+pm+to+make+this+molehill+into+a+mountain+An+accomplished+molehill+man+will+often+have+his+mountain+finished+even+before+lunch&quot;&pg=PA27#v=onepage (1954).

Business

“Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 13 October 1918; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 223-224
1916 - 1919

Learning, Time, Sun, Summer

“[Description of Britain] Its plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of refreshing water.”
[Descriptio Britanniae] Campis late pansis collibusque amoeno situ locatis, praepollenti culturae aptis, montibus alternandis animalium pastibus maxime covenientibus, quorum diversorum colorum flores humanis gressibus pulsati non indecentem ceu picturam eisdem imprimebant, electa veluti sponsa monilibus diversis ornata, fontibus lucidis crebris undis niveas veluti glareas pellentibus, pernitidisque rivis leni murmure serpentibus ipsorumque in ripis accubantibus suavis soporis pignus praetendentibus, et lacubus frigidum aquae torrentem vivae exundantibus irrigua.

Gildas De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Section 3.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

Love, Flowers, Water, Appearance

“Chorus of the Eumenides: …
With useless endeavour
Forever, forever,
Is Sisyphus rolling
His stone up the mountain!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

“Travers's Mary Poppins was a natural phenomena, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. … philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing …”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

In his Foreword to Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur (2007) by Giorgia Grilli, p. xiii

World, Nature, Universe

“At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite. I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and double stretch of water.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)

Spring, Water, Waiting, Sea

“I'm happy in the every day Way
Among the mist and vines and caves
The wilderness is boundless
My companions are lazy white clouds
There are roads but they do not reach the world
My mind has come to rest and nothing can stir my thought
On a bed of rock I sit alone in the night
While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Happiness, World, Way, Night

“How can I give you up? You're the mountains and the lake, the memories — you have them all. When you're with me, I'm at home, wherever I am.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

Home, Memory

“No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985)

Silence

“There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

The Green Mile (1996)

Death, Sun, Summer

“Be. If I could be Jesus for just a day and have it my way, if I
Could be perfect, like the light — Jesus for a night and have
It my way — if I could be Atop my mountain a phenomenon — when I walk on water I am
Complete, at peace and I'd make it so you'd be just like me.”

Macy Gray (1967) American singer-songwriter and actress

"Jesus For A Day" (co-written with Jeremy Ruzumna, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Bobby Ross Avila, Issiah J. Avila)
The Trouble with Being Myself (2003)

Peace, Way, Light, Water

“Dalissem chuckled. It felt like being grinned at by a big mountain cat—delightful for the beauty of the animal, disturbing for the possible sequel.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 1, Chapter 2 (p. 27)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Beauty, Cats, Animals

“When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. That keeps me working on my integrity. And the thing about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[Peter Haldeman, w:Peter Haldeman, The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help, The New York Times, November 28, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/fashion/the-return-of-werner-erhard-father-of-self-help.html?ref=fashion&_r=0]

Personality

“We saw a raven very high above us. It called out, and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound. It called again and again as it flew onwards, and the mountains gave back the sound, seeming as if from their centre; a musical bell-like answering to the bird's hoarse voice.”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

July 27, 1800 Cf. Wordsworth's The Excursion, Book 4, lines 1175-87 http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww401.html. Diaries

Music, Bird

“You were playing in the snow
You were banging on the doors
You climbed up on the roof
Roof of the world
You were pulling up the rhododendrons
Loping down the mountain They want to know you
They will hunt you down
Then they will kill you
Run away, run away… We found your footprints in the snow
We brushed them all away… You're the wild man.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

World

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they'd never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, The Future of Stone Mountain (July 2015)

Men, War, Home, History

“It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence — the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires — without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273.

God, Feeling, Strong, Season

“The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love, Feeling, Passion

“I sat at the computer at work, debugging. I was bored. It was afternoon. I was twenty-two. It was June. Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, thunderheads move in almost every afternoon between May and early July. They materialize, darken the day, spit a few drops, open the sky with lightning, then disappear like so many dreams.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

Dreams

“Josef Albers's [a former art teacher of Rauschenberg, on Black Mountain College ] rule is to make order. As for me, I consider myself successful when I do something that resembles the lack of order I sense. (around 1949 during Black Mountain College, fh).”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

In Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, Sam Hunter; as quoted in Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, Spain, 2006, p. 37
1950's

Art, Sense, Teachers, Success

“With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

“Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,
and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,
they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,
and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:
"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;
we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys —
and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.
Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"
The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:
"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!
God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,
light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.
It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

From the Bull Ritual, Book VI, line 197
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, War, World, Fear

“What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.
Then his mind's eye looked up and caught his own image and realized where he was and what he was seeing and…I don't know what really happened…but the slippage that Phædrus had felt earlier, the internal parting of his mind, suddenly gathered momentum, as do the rocks at the top of a mountain. Before he could stop it, the sudden accumulated mass of awareness began to grow and grow into an avalanche of thought and awareness out of control; with each additional growth of the downward tearing mass loosening hundreds of times its volume, and then that mass uprooting hundreds of times its volume more, and then hundreds of times that; on and on, wider and broader, until there was nothing left to stand.
No more anything.
It all gave way from under him.”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20

Religion, Way, Knowledge, Tear

“Dicko: The mountain was too high, the river too deep. Cabaret.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 5

“How do the green mountains through the ages remain green?
How do the flowing waters day and night keep flowing?
Let us not cease either but throught the ages remain green.”

Yi Hwang (1501–1570) Korean Confucianism scholar

Twelve Songs of Dosan

Age, Water, Night

“Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Letter to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801)

Life, Pleasure

“I travel through your waist as through a river,
I voyage your body as through a grove going,
as by a footpath going up a mountain
and suddenly coming upon a steep ravine
I go the straitened way of your keen thoughts
break through to daylight upon your white forehead
and there my spirit flings itself down, is shattered
now I collect my fragments one by one
and go on, bodiless, searching, in the dark…. you take on the likeness of a tree, a cloud,
you are all birds and now you are a star,
now you resemble the sharp edge of a sword
and now the executioner's bowl of blood,
the encroaching ivy that over grows and then
roots out the soul and divides it from itself”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Way, Travel, Soul, Search

“Like an adventure who was asked why he climbed the mountain and answered, “Because it's there!” I think our culture has developed this intense love-hate relationship with risk, in part because it's always there.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 48

Love, Hate, Thinking, Parting

“When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Meaning" (1991)

World, Bird

“I was going to be lynched. I had to go into hiding in the mountains for two weeks.”

Patrick McGoohan (1928–2009) actor

When The Prisoner had an inconclusive ending Daily Mail, 15th January 2009 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1116243/How-star-stage-Patrick-McGoohan-Prisoner-success-switching-screen.html

“What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 367 et seq.

Maternity

“Calcutta, for me, was a particular idea of the modern city, and I found it in many forms, works, and genres. … by ‘modernity’ I have in mind something that was never new. True modernity was born with the aura of inherited decay and life. … if you look at paintings and photographs, and see old films of the city, you notice that these walls and buildings were never new – that Calcutta was born to look more or less as I saw it as a child. I’m not referring here to an air of timelessness; the patina that gave to Calcutta’s alleys, doorways, and houses their continuity and disposition is very different from the eternity that defines mausoleums and monuments. It’s this quality I’m trying to get at when I speak of modernity. … modernity in the nineteenth century is indistinguishable from nature; perhaps it is nature – in some ways, the culvert, which has emerged from the rock, seems more of its place than the mountain itself.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

citation needed
On Modernity

Life, Way, Idea, Nature

“Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton аs his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

Feeling, Birth, Nature, Knowledge

“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.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Wallenstein, part i. Act ii, scene 4 (translated from Schiller)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Faith, Religion, Beauty, Intelligence

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Men, Food, Soul, Flowers

“Let us imitate Him who sought the mountain-tops as His refreshment after toil, but never left duties undone or sufferers unrelieved in pain. Let us imitate Him who turned from the joys of contemplation to the joys of service without a murmur when His disciples broke in on His solitude with, "All men seek Thee; " but never suffered the outward work to blunt His desire for, nor to encroach on, the hour of still communion with His Father. Lord, teach us to work; Lord, teach us to pray.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

Men, Pain, Solitude, Suffering

“As I sit at my desk, I know where I am. I see before me a window; beyond that some trees; beyond that the red roofs of the campus of Stanford University; beyond them the trees and the roof tops which mark the town of Palo Alto; beyond them the bare golden hills of the Hamilton Range… beyond that other mountains, range upon range, until we come to the Rockies; beyond that the Great Plains and the Mississippi; beyond that the Alleghenies; beyond that the eastern seaboard; beyond that the Atlantic Ocean; beyond that is Europe; beyond that is Asia. I know, furthermore, that if I go far enough I will come back to where I am now. In other words, I have a picture of the earth as round. I visualize it as a globe. I am a little hazy on some of the details… I probably could not draw a very good map of Indonesia, but I have a fair idea where everything is located on the face of this globe. Looking further, I visualize the globe as a small speck circling around a bright star which is the sun, in the company of many other similar specks, the planets. Looking still further, I see our star the sun as a member of millions upon millions of others in the Galaxy. Looking still further, I visualize the Galaxy as one of millions upon millions of others in the universe.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 3 Introduction

Star, Idea, Tree, Universe

“Nobody ever stubs his toe against a mountain. It's the little temptations that bring a man down.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

All for a Pinch of Snuff, c. 1910. Quoted in M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 64.

“Mastering an art is like reaching the top of the passion mountain…. at the top the passion dies out! So keep learning.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 8
The Other Wife (2003)

Art, Learning, Passion

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Life, God, War, Health

“As the anima does with men, the animus also creates states of possession in women. In myths and fairy tales this condition is often represented by the devil or an "old man of the mountain," that is, a troll or ogre, holding the heroine prisoner and forcing her to kill all men who approach her or to deliver them into the hands of the demon; or else the father shuts up the heroine in a tower or a grave or sets her on a glass mountain, so that no one can get near her. In such cases, the heroine can often do nothing but wait patiently for a savior to deliver her from her plight. Through her suffering, the animus (for both the demon and the savior are two aspects of the same inner power) can be gradually transformed into a positive inner force.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man

Women, Men, Suffering, Waiting

“The mountain rill
Seeks with no surer flow the far bright sea,
Than my unchang'd affections flow to thee.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

To One Beloved.

Sea

“Mr. Sandburg possesses a powerful imagination, which plays over and about his realistic themes and constantly ennobles them. …strikes, and factories, and slaughter-houses, and railroad trains, all take on a lyric quality under his touch. …When Carl Sandburg left college, he was no longer an unskilled labourer, working with his hands. He was a thinking man, with a brain charged with ideas and emotions, determined to do his part in bringing about the millennium. For Carl Sandburg… is a revolutionary; he must push the world to where he is convinced it ought to be. …again and again, he deserts the seer's mountain peak for the demagogue's soap-box. …Mr. Sandburg is like a man striving to batter down a jail with balls of brightly coloured glass. …Whether constant preoccupation with disease is a healthy form of literature, whether it acts as a curative, is open to question. But we can surely say that to be curative the disease must be treated unsentimentally and truly. Mr. Sandburg has aimed at doing this, has striven hard to do it. For this, one honours him above his fellows. For this, and the spirit of beauty which pervades his work.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

"Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=UgZaAAAAMAAJ (1917).

World, Disease, Beauty, Imagination

“That was my longing: for the mountains' divine solitude and peacefulness, for pure, white snow. I got tired of the big city.
I am at home again in the mountains. There I sit for many hours amid their white virginity and find myself again.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Das war meine Sehnsucht: nach göttlicher Einsamkeit und Ruhe der Berge, nach unberührtem, weißen Schnee. Ich war der großen Stadt müde geworden.
Ich bin wieder zu Hause in den Bergen. Da sitze ich viele Stunden in ihrer weißen Jungfräulichkeit und finde mich selbst wieder.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Peace, Home, Solitude

“That's where we have to go," said Kestrel, looking at the mountain. "Into the fire.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), The Wind Singer (Book 1), p. 265

“No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Answer given when he was asked if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison. Interview with Ted Kaczynski http://web.archive.org/web/20061003044754/www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk/profiles/ted.html Interviews

Nature, Sense, Memory, Forgetting

“When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or ploughed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to be above all others the Range of Light.”

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

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 1: The Sierra Nevada

Tree, Light, Heart

Quotes about mountains page 6

Quotes about mountains
page 6