Mountains

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Mountains are natural elevations of the earth's surface, distinguished from hills by their greater height, and commonly by their steeper slopes and more sharply defined summits.

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All that expands the spirit, yet appals.
  • Above me are the Alps,
    The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
    Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
    And throned Eternity in icy halls
    Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
    The avalanche – the thunderbolt of snow!
    All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
    Gather around these summits, as to show
    How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
  • A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
  • 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.
  • Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit! Der Hauch der Grüfte
    Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Lüfte;
    Die Welt ist vollkommen überall,
    Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.
    • On the mountains is freedom; no clammy breath
      Mounts there from the rotting caves of death!
      Blest is the wide world every where
      When man and his sorrows come not near.
    • Friedrich Schiller The Bride of Messina (1804), Act IV, sc. vii; translation by George Irvine (1837) p. 136.
  • Because it's there.
    • George Mallory, interviewed by the New York Times, March 18, 1923.
    • On being asked his reasons for making an attempt on Mount Everest.
  • It's a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory.
    • Ed Viesturs No Shortcuts To The Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
  • Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.
  • Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height,
    What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
    In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
  • Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet
    This is not Done by Jostling in the Street.
  • 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 (1823), Canto II, stanza 12.
  • I demens et saevas curre per Alpes,
    ut pueris placeas et declamation fias!
    • Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
      To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
    • Juvenal Satires, X, line 166. Translation by John Dryden (1692), line 171.
I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams.
  • I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse.
  • In our little journey up to the Grande Chartreuse, I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation, that there was no restraining: Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.
    • Thomas Gray, Letter to Richard West, November 16, 1739.
  • I remember at Chamouni – in the very eyes of Mont Blanc – hearing another woman – English also – exclaim to her party – "did you ever see any thing more rural".
    • Lord Byron, Journal entry for September 17, 1816.
  • Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
    • John Ruskin Modern Painters (1856) Vol. 4, part 5, ch. 2.
  • Petrus Comestor saith that Mount Olympus riseth even to the clear aether, wherefore letters written in the dust on the summit of that mountain have been found unchanged after the lapse of a whole year. Neither can birds live there, by reason of the rarefaction of the air, nor could the Philosophers who have ascended it remain there even for a brief space of time, without sponges soaked in water, which they applied to their nostrils and sucked thence a denser air.
Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
  • So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try,
    Mount o'er the Vales, and seem to tread the Sky;
    Th' Eternal Snows appear already past,
    And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last:
    But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
    The growing Labours of the lengthen'd Way,
    Th' increasing Prospect tires our wandring Eyes,
    Hills peep o'er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
  • So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
    But bind him to his native mountains more.
The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb.
  • 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" (1848), in The Maine Woods (2004) p. 65.
  • Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
    Large codes of fraud and woe.
  • Woher kommen die höchsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, daß sie aus dem Meere kommen. Dies Zeugnis ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wände ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten muß das Höchste zu seiner Höhe kommen.
    • Where do the highest mountains come from? I once asked. Then I learned that they come from out of the sea. The evidence is inscribed in their stone and in the walls of their summits. It is from the deepest that the highest must come to its height.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche Also Spracht Zarathustra (1883-91), Part III, Chapter 45. Translation by Graham Parkes, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2005) p. 132.
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter.
  • 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.
  • A few hours mountain climbing turns a rogue and a saint into two roughly equal creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity—and liberty is finally added by sleep.
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