quotations about mountains
Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"The Notch of the White Mountains", Sketches from Memory
Because it's there.
GEORGE MALLORY
on being asked his reasons for attempting to climb Mount Everest, New York Times, March 18, 1923
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
The Pleasures of Hope
There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation -- an ascent above the reach of life's expectations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgivings.
L. SHERIDAN LE FANU
The Haunted Baronet and Others: Ghost Stories
The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars?
ANNIE DILLARD
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
You don't need to climb a mountain to know that it's high.
PAULO COELHO
Aleph
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.
LORD BYRON
Manfred
Mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquility.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"The Majesty of the Sea", Country Life in America, 1910
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
The mountains are like God--so infinite. I cannot possibly comprehend.
JAN BOYS
Traveling With the Lord
At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.
JOHN MUIR
The Wild Muir
The view is better than you remembered last year or yesterday or even moments ago. High mountains are like that, high mountains anywhere, particularly in winter.
PATRICK ARMSTRONG
The Log of a Snow Survey
All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create.
GEORGE MICHAEL SINCLAIR KENNEDY
Editor's Note, The Alpinist, April 1, 2010
The mountains are like a dark jarring tear through the fabric of water and sky.
MELANIE CALVERT
Freycinet
I am the far-seen mountain
Before thee towering high,
Where, peak beyond peak reaching,
Rise others such as I.
Our dark-blue robes at twilight
We draw about our forms;
Ours is the boundless quiet
That dwells above the storms.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Spirit of the Mountain"
The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains -- their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Ktaadn"
Mountains interpos'd
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
A Wild Sheep Chase
The grandeur of each mountain peak
That rears to heaven its granite form;
The craggy cliffs where eagles shriek
Amid the thunder and the storm.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"New England"
He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
LORD BYRON
The Island