Mountains Quotes

“An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Exhumations

“The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the unshakable sanity of the senses, spared my mind the burden of too much thinking, turned myself outward to experience the world and inward to savor the pleasures it has given me.”
― Richard Nelson, Island Within

“All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create.
-from the Editor's Note, The Alpinist (April 1, 2010)”
― Michael Kennedy

“...just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last”
― Fosco Maraini, Secret Tibet

“For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.”
― George Mallory

“...seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.”
― Reinhold Messner, Mountains from Space: Peaks and Ranges of the Seven Continents

“Everything was everlastingly loose and responsive, it was all everywhere beyond the truth, beyond emptyspace blue. "The mountains are mighty patient, Buddha-man," I said out loud, and took a drink.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights."

"No", she said. "Not particularly."

"Only missteps."

She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer."

"So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.”
― Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

“Mi piace essere in un corpo che ormai invecchia. Posso guardare le montagne senza il desiderio di scalarle. Quand'ero giovane le avrei volute conquistare. Ora posso lasciarmi conquistare da loro. Le montagne, come il mare, ricordano una misura di grandezza dalla quale l'uomo si sente ispirato, sollevato. Quella stessa grandezza è anche in ognuno di noi, ma lì ci è difficile riconoscerla. Per questo siamo attratti dalle montagne.”
― Tiziano Terzani, Lettere contro la guerra

“You have to conquer every obstacle, before you can reach the top of the mountain.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“If you despise the mountains you have climbed, you are not welcomed by the mountains you have not yet climbed!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The mountains are intimations of transcendence, which he is now free to pursue, and the walking writes messages in every cell of his body, telling him that he is not locked inside a cement box, nor in a water drum, but is moving forward.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“Nepal is a mountainous country, although a majority of its population resides in the flatlands. The majesty of mountains is fascinating to behold, though no one can reside upon them for long.

When it comes to composing poetry, mountains can naturally influence poets who live among them. The metaphors and imagery of mountainous life may often arise instinctively in their writing. However, not every poem is born from the presence of mountains. The core essence of poetry remains universal, regardless of geography. Landscape does not alter the soul of poetry, but it gently shapes the imagery and metaphors poets may draw from their surroundings.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Along the foot of [the] mountains are vast woods, full of stags, roe deer, and other wild animals and beasts of various kinds, and these forests oftentimes afford a strong and safe protection to the cattle of the inhabitants against the depredations of their enemies.”
― John of Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, Volume 2

“Mountains are not
unpredictable; they speak
You simply need to learn their language.
Yet in the end, death's call is
stronger than the mountains.”
― Fariha Guncha

“And now, here, in these mountains
that hold you from yourself, the wind
blowing down your final face,
you tell us what we know: Time is clean
and brief for girls in a wild time,
past for ladies up like smoke in narrow wind.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“What mountains you are
America! What minefields
and mysteries, symptoms
and cinemas and symphonies
and cemeteries!”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“In no other place, besides the top of a mountain, will you feel so small and at the same time so great for being part of the masterpiece of God the creator.”
― Prof. Vinicius Montgomery

“The year drags on. I hoard the emptiness of this bed,
my dreams all mountain passes and grief of separation.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, faint, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Bird song and tumbling blossoms scatter through tangled confusion away.
Streamside door and mountain window all idleness and silence, silence--

up in those gorges, who would guess the great human drama even exists?
And when people in town gaze out, they see distant empty-cloud mountains.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“In mountain forests, I've lost myself completely:
identity's nothing but the role we play in public.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“A mountain cloud all grief and sorrow,
I drift the end of an empty day, aimless,

and what have I to do with people now?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“If memory be a mountaintop

mine is hidden

by fat, puffy clouds, and other
symptoms.”
― Ailish Hopper, Dark~Sky Society

“Right before me, on a canvas of cloudy gray sky, twin flowers sway on the very edge of a precipice that pokes out like an arrowhead. I whimper in relief. The deep blue stems of two Odyssa flowers twist around each other, softening out to a pastel blue that gives way to blooming heads of white petals. Unlike the showy, pointed petals of the Feiyan, both Odyssa are soft and round, balls of inward curls that protect a gleaming cerulean center— exactly like Card's eyes, sharply aware and persistent. Resilient. As I must be to collect them and get off this godforsaken mountain.”
― Becky Jenkinson, Wildflower

“The mountain air was thin but invigorating and the scenery sublime. Below us, the river sparkled like cut glass. The valley and mountains above were coloured by metal ores; red, purple, orange, green, bluish and heron-grey strata were stacked like playing cards, a stark grandeur that moved me”
― Jane Wilson-Howarth, Under a Himalayan Sky: A Story of Love, Loss and Learning to Live

“I was at peace with the majesty and silence of the mountains.”
― Margie Goldsmith, Becoming a Badass: From Fearful to Fierce

“We are snowflakes in the wind, Zhak! It seems we are at the mercy of fortune, but together we can cover even the mountains!”
― Alfredo Borioni Farinelli, The Tribe of Vimar

“wandering
across the river
over the quiet woodland
rustling
among the pines
the mountain wind”
― Meeta Ahluwalia

“If there's anything truly strange about the mountains, it was that- you were never quite happy in them and you were never quite happy beyond them.”
― Emilee Hackney, All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir