Mountain Top Quotes

• Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. 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

  Religious, Blessed, Light

  John Muir (1968). “South of Yosemite”

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• Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Love, Life, Relationship

  "Markings". Book by Dag Hammarskjold, 1982.

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• Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.

  Greg Child

  Climbing, Hiking, Mountain

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• Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

  John Muir

  Inspirational, Life, Nature

  Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1898

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• In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of... something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb... and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.

  Rob Parker

  Motivational, Home, Mean

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  Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

  John Muir

  Peace, Nature, Sunshine

  Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1898

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• You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

  Rene Daumal

  Art, Memories, Learning

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• Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain

  Jack Kerouac

  Motivational, Wisdom, Travel

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• Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.

  John Muir

  Men, Hiking, Climbing

  John Muir (2015). “JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays”, p.276, e-artnow

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• Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

  John Muir

  Wisdom, Nature, Autumn

  Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1898

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• There are naked people in boots on a mountain top firing guns.

  Andy Richter

  Gun, Hiking, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Martin Luther King took us to the mountain top: I want to take us to the bank

  Don King

  Kings, Boxing, Mountain

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• Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

  Ed Viesturs

  Sports, Nature, Travel

  Ed Viesturs, David Roberts (2011). “The Will to Climb: Obsession and Commitment and the Quest to Climb Annapurna--the World's Deadliest Peak”, p.87, Crown

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• The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

  Confucius

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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• How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that musn't be daredIs this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful, soberly astonished. Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? Noand yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfactionfulfilled a destiny. To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Dream, Struggle, Mean

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• By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.

  Robert Macfarlane

  Men, Profound, Mountain

  Robert MacFarlane (2009). “Mountains Of The Mind”, p.275, Granta

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• The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this; What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Climbing, Perspective, Trying

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• What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Life, Motivational, Travel

  "We knocked the bastard off" by David Fickling, www.theguardian.com. March 13, 2003.

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• We don't live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Happiness, Mean, Climbing

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• One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . .

  George Leigh Mallory

  Dream, Winning, Conquer

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• So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Struggle, Mean, Adventure

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• Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.

  Matthew Arnold

  Hiking, Mountain, Baldness

  'Wordsworth' in 'Essays in Criticism' Second Series (1888)

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• Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you 'my beloved daughter,' 'my beloved son,' 'my beloved child.' To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being.

  Henri Nouwen

  Daughter, Prayer, Children

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• Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.

  Austin O'Malley

  Lonely, Progress, Mountain

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• Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.

  John Muir

  Beauty, Nature, Eye

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.517, Library of America

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