Quotes about valley

A collection of quotes on the topic of valley, mountain, likeness, hill.

Quotes about valley

Hildegard of Bingen photo
Sun Tzu photo

“Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter X · Terrain

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 76e

Peter Singer photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Fernando Pessoa photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Thomas Boston photo
José Saramago photo

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Kanye West photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognizes the full import of this simile.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Maxims

Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Steve Blank photo

“The Silicon Valley culture is "I can win and you can win" - it isn't a sum-zero game.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Erwin Schrödinger photo
Kenzaburō Ōe photo
Barack Obama photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo

“And at some point, I know that one of my daughters will ask, perhaps my youngest, will ask, "Daddy, why is this monument here? What did this man do?" How might I answer them? Unlike the others commemorated in this place, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a president of the United States — at no time in his life did he hold public office. He was not a hero of foreign wars. He never had much money, and while he lived he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. By his own accounts, he was a man frequently racked with doubt, a man not without flaws, a man who, like Moses before him, more than once questioned why he had been chosen for so arduous a task — the task of leading a people to freedom, the task of healing the festering wounds of a nation's original sin. And yet lead a nation he did. Through words he gave voice to the voiceless. Through deeds he gave courage to the faint of heart. By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed.
Like Moses before him, he would never live to see the Promised Land. But from the mountain top, he pointed the way for us — a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace — a land in which all of God's children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood.
We have not yet arrived at this longed for place. For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us — when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. And yet, by erecting this monument, we are reminded that this different, better place beckons us, and that we will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but rather we will find it somewhere in our hearts.”

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

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Groundbreaking Ceremony (13 November 2006)
2006

Sri Aurobindo photo
Bahá'u'lláh photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace —
Radiant palace — reared its head.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

" The Haunted Palace http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/poe/17478" (1839), st. 1.

Kanye West photo

“I walk through the valley of the Chi where death is,
Top floor, the view alone will leave ya breathless.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Jesus Walks, The College Dropout (2004)
Bible References

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

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

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Frank Zappa photo

“Shes a valley girl
In a clothing store
Okay, fine…
Fer sure, fer sure.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Valley Girl" (co-written with Moon Zappa).
Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch (1982)

Edgar Allan Poe photo
Sarojini Naidu photo

“Stand here with me…with the stars and hills as witness and in their presence consecrate your life and talent, your song and your speech, your thought and your dream, to the motherland. O poet see visions from hill –tops and spread abroad the message of hope to the toilers of the valleys.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

G.K. Gokhale urged her to join the Indian Independence Movement quoted in [Naravane, Vishwanath S., Sarojini Naidu: An Introduction to Her Life, Work and Poetry, http://books.google.com/books?id=h6v8HsRUBucC&pg=PA133, 1 January 1996, Orient Blackswan, 978-81-250-0931-3, 133]

Friedrich Schiller photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.”

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

Fiction, The Colour Out of Space (1927)
Context: West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.

John of the Cross photo
Martin Luther photo

“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

Ivo Andrič photo
Alexandra David-Néel photo
Helen Keller photo

“The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Richard Siken photo

“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Source: Gem of the Ocean

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Robin S. Sharma photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Ansel Adams photo
Francesca Lia Block photo
Frank O'Hara photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Jim Butcher photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Bell Hooks photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo
John Muir photo

“That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits.”

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

" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86)
1890s

Howard Carter photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
George Chapman photo
Yury Dombrovsky photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
William Cowper photo

“But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard;
Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Frederick Douglass photo
William Morris photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Albert Barnes photo
Bruce Cockburn photo
John Oliver photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo

“Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingale
God, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1802-05; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted & translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 48
1794 - 1840

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“And I say to you this morning in conclusion that I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in things. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in gadgets and contrivances. As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Not in the little gods that can be with us in a few moments of prosperity, but in the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil. That's the God. Not in the god that can give us a few Cadillac cars and Buick convertibles, as nice as they are, that are in style today and out of style three years from now, but the God who threw up the stars to bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity. Not in the god that can throw up a few skyscraping buildings, but the God who threw up the gigantic mountains, kissing the sky, as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blues. Not in the god that can give us a few televisions and radios, but the God who threw up that great cosmic light that gets up early in the morning in the eastern horizon, (who paints its technicolor across the blue—something that man could never make. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in the little gods that can be destroyed in an atomic age, but the God who has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home. That's the God that I'm putting my ultimate faith in.”

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

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Han-shan photo
Han-shan photo
John Muir photo
Amy Sherman-Palladino photo

“I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.”

Amy Sherman-Palladino (1966) American television writer, director, and producer

NYTimes.com, "Job Title: The 'Gilmore' Noodge" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/arts/television/23heff.html?ex=1121313600&en=6a20ddae804ec0a8&ei=5070&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1106535613-AH4C904DjoUiEAdysK3Zow&oref=login.

Christopher Marlowe photo

“p>Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.”

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)

Philip Rosedale photo

“I think the magic of Silicon Valley is not in fostering risk-taking, but instead in making it safe to work on risky things.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Interview published in SingularityHub.com http://singularityhub.com/2015/06/15/are-people-in-silicon-valley-just-smarter/. June 15, 2015.

Richard Rodríguez photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Franz von Papen photo
John Bunyan photo
Jello Biafra photo

“George H. W. Bush - "King George the 1st" - Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police”

Jello Biafra (1958) singer and activist

Biafra's Nicknames for Various Political Figures

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Steve Blank photo

“In Silicon Valley, we have a special word for a failed entrepreneur – it’s called experienced.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

University of Minnesota commencement speech, FounderLY http://www.founderly.com/2013/05/university-of-minnesota-commencement-speech. May 06, 2013.

Jagadish Chandra Bose photo
Alain Daniélou photo
Edmund Hillary photo
John Muir photo

“I would advise sitting from morning till night under some willow bush on the river bank where there is a wide view. This will be "doing the valley" far more effectively than riding along trails in constant motion from point to point. The entire valley is made up of "points of interest."”

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

"The Summer Flood of Tourists", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 1 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated 14 June 1875, published 22 June 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 71
Advice for visitors to Yosemite given by John Muir at age 37 years. Compare advice given by the 74-year-old Muir below.
1870s

“In 1330 the country was invaded by the Mongols who indulged in arson, rape and murder throughout the Valley (of Kashmir). The king and the Brahmans fled away but among the inhabitants who remained… Muslim ways of life were gradually adopted by the people as the only alternative…”

Mohammad Habib (1895–1971) Indian historian

Mohammad Habib in Some Aspects of the Foundation of the Delhi Sultanate, p. 20
Also quoted in Indian muslims: Who Are They, p. 91 & Growth of Muslim population in medieval India, A.D. 1000-1800, p.160; by K. S. Lal

Thomas Moore photo

“Oh, weep for the hour
When to Eveleen's bower
The lord of the valley with false vows came.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Eveleen's Bower.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)