mountains

"Carmel is really not a single mountain, but a mountain chain. The first foothills begin right after Zichron Ya’acov, and my traveling companion who, although he has never been in Russia, speaks Russian but occasionally makes amusing mistakes, warned me: “Now there will begin insane beauty.”"

"Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells: for he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains: husbandmen also, and vine dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel: for he loved husbandry."

"Thine head upon thee is like Carmel,"

"He immediately embarked for Egypt, through the means of some Egyptian sailors, who very opportunely at that time landed on the Phœnician coast under mount Carmelus, in whose temple Pythagoras, separated from all society, for the most part dwelt. But the sailors gladly received him, foreseeing that they should acquire great gain by exposing him to sale. But when, during the voyage, they perceived with what continence and venerable gravity he conducted himself, in conformity to the mode of living he had adopted, they were more benevolently disposed towards him. Observing, likewise, that there was something greater than what pertains to human nature in the modesty of the youth, they called to mind how unexpectedly he had appeared to them on their landing, when from the summit of mount Carmelus, which they knew was more sacred than other mountains, and inaccessible to the vulgar, he leisurely descended without looking back, or suffering any delay from precipices or opposing stones; and that when he came to the boat, he said nothing more than, “Are you bound for Egypt?”"

"Hunched and humped the rusty slopes As if great camels lay at rest there."

"The earth mourneth and languisheth: Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down: Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits."

"From Carmel’s almond-shaded steep We feel the cheering fragrance creep:"

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God."

"And I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon mount Ephraim and Gilead."

"I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger."

"And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down that the rain stop thee not."

"As I live, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts, Surely as Tabor is among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so shall he come."

"На Кармиле иудейские пророка метали самые ярые проклятия язычеству. На Кармиле в одной из пещер троглодитов, жил Илия, лютейший враг Ваала."

"He was like Mount Sumeru, king of mountains, rising up out of the great sea."

"It's tempting to go to the throat of the volcano to get the data, because if you do you're a hero ... It's a battle between your mind and your emotions. If your emotions win out, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble."

"Volcanic action is essentially paroxysmal; yet Mr. Lyell will admit no greater paroxysms than we ourselves have witnessed—no periods of feverish spasmodic energy, during which the very framework of nature has been convulsed and torn asunder. The utmost movements that he allows are a slight quivering of her muscular integuments."

"[T]here are depths of thousands of miles which are hidden from our inquiry. The only tidings we have from those unfathomable regions are by means of volcanoes, those burning mountains that seem to discharge their materials from the lowest abysses of the Earth."

"Most of these Mountains and Inland places whereon these kind of Petrify’d Bodies and Shells are found at present, or have been heretofore, were formerly under the Water, and that either by the descending of the Waters to another part of the Earth by the alteration of the Centre of Gravity of the whole bulk, or rather by the Eruption of some kind of Subterraneous Fires or Earthquakes, great quantities of Earth have been deserted by the Water and laid bare and dry."

"The forces which displace continents are the same as those which produce great fold-mountain ranges. Continental drift, faults and compressions, earthquakes, volcanicity, transgression cycles and polar wandering are undoubtedly connected causally on a grand scale. Their common intensification in certain periods of the earth’s history shows this to be true. However, what is cause and what effect, only the future will unveil."

"May not subterraneous fire be considered as the great plough (if I may be allowed the expression) which Nature makes use of to turn up the bowels of the earth?"

"An ebbing tide of fire, the evil powers In fear and anger here are paramount, Rending the bosom of the fertile Earth, And spreading desolation. Black as night, And terrible, as if the grave had sent Its own dark atmosphere to upper air, The heavy vapours rise ; from out the smoke Break the red volumes of the central flame, And lava floods and burning showers descend, Parching the soil to barrenness."

"Debout, les damnés de la terre Debout, les forçats de la faim La raison tonne en son cratère C'est l'éruption de la fin"

"A map of the moon... should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces."

"A volcano may be considered as a cannon of immense size."

"Looking back across the long cycles of change through which the land has been shaped into its present form, let us realise that these geographical revolutions are not events wholly of the dim past, but that they are still in progress. So slow and measured has been their march, that even from the earliest times of human history they seem hardly to have advanced at all. But none the less are they surely and steadily transpiring around us. In the fall of rain and the flow of rivers, in the bubble of springs and the silence of frost, in the quiet creep of glaciers and the tumultuous rush of ocean waves, in the tremor of the earthquake and the outburst of the volcano, we may recognise the same play of terrestrial forces by which the framework of the continents has been step by step evolved."

"By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago; Yet still the silver corpse must spin And with another's light must glow. Her frozen mountains must forget Their primal hot volcanic breath, Doomed to revolve for ages yet, Void amphitheatres of death. And all about the cosmic sky, The black that lies beyond our blue, Dead stars innumerable lie, And stars of red and angry hue Not dead but doomed to die."

"Seeing therefore the variety of Motion which we find in the World is always decreasing, there is a necessity of conserving and recruiting it by active Principles, such as are the cause of Gravity, by which Planets and Comets keep their Motions in their Orbs, and Bodies acquire great Motion in falling; and the cause of Fermentation, by which the Heart and Blood of Animals are kept in perpetual Motion and Heat; the inward Parts of the Earth are constantly warm'd, and in some places grow very hot; Bodies burn and shine, Mountains take fire, the Caverns of the Earth are blown up, and the Sun continues violently hot and lucid, and warms all things by his Light. For we meet with very little Motion in the World, besides what is owing to these active Principles."

"If I was to establish a system, it would be, that Mountains are produced by Volcanoes, and not Volcanoes by Mountains."

"[On the volcano.] And many a fire there burns beneath the ground."

"Our earth is very old, an old warrior that has lived through many battles. Nevertheless, the face of it is still changing, and science sees no certain limit of time for its stately evolution. Our solid Earth, apparently so stable, inert, and finished, is changing, mobile, and still evolving. Its major quakings are largely the echoes of that divine far-off event, the building of our noble mountains. The lava floods and intriguing volcanoes tell us of the plasticity, mobility, of the deep interior of the globe. The slow coming and going of ancient shallow seas on the continental plateaus tell us of the rhythmic distortion of the deep interior-deep-seated flow and changes of volume. Mountain chains prove the Earth's solid crust itself to be mobile in high degree. And the secret of it all—the secret of the earthquake, the secret of the “temple of fire,” the secret of the ocean basin, the secret of the highland—is in the heart of the Earth, forever invisible to human eyes."

"Each volcano is an independent machine—nay, each vent and monticule is for the time being engaged in its own peculiar business, cooking as it were its special dish, which in due time is to be separately served. We have instances of vents within hailing distance of each other pouring out totally different kinds of lava, neither sympathizing with the other in any discernible manner nor influencing other in any appreciable degree."

"Populations of bacteria live in the spumes of volcanic thermal vents on the ocean floor, multiplying in water above the boiling point. And far beneath Earth's surface, to a depth of 2 miles (3.2 km) or more, dwell the SLIMES (subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems), unique assemblages of bacteria and fungi that occupy pores in the interlocking mineral grains of igneous rock and derive their energy from inorganic chemicals. The SLIMES are independent of the world above, so even if all of it were burned to a cinder, they would carry on and, given enough time, probably evolve new life-forms able to re-enter the world of air and sunlight."

"Etna presents us not merely with an image of the power of subterranean heat, but a record also of the vast period of time during which that power has been exerted. A majestic mountain has been produced by volcanic action, yet the time of which the volcanic forms the register, however vast, is found by the geologist to be of inconsiderable amount, even in the modern annals of the Earth's history. In like manner, the Falls of Niagara teach us not merely to appreciate the power of moving water, but furnish us at the same time with data for estimating the enormous lapse of ages during which that force has operated. A deep and long ravine has been excavated, and the river has required ages to accomplish the task, yet the same region affords evidence that the sum of these ages is as nothing, and as the work of yesterday, when compared to the antecedent periods, of which there are monuments in the same district."

"The real difficulty about vulcanism is not to see how it can start, but how it can stop."

"The fire at Lipara, Xenophanes says, ceased once for sixteen years, and came back in the seventeenth. And he says that the lavastream from Aetna is neither of the nature of fire, nor is it continuous, but it appears at intervals of many years."

"A bewildering assortment of (mostly microscopic) life-forms has been found thriving in what were once thought to be uninhabitable regions of our planet. These hardy creatures have turned up in deep, hot underground rocks, around scalding volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean, in the desiccated, super-cold Dry Valleys of Antarctica, in places of high acid, alkaline, and salt content, and below many meters of polar ice. ... Some deep-dwelling, heat-loving microbes, genetic studies suggest, are among the oldest species known, hinting that not only can life thrive indefinitely in what appear to us totally alien environments, it may actually originate in such places."

"On April 10th, 1815, six thousand miles away from here, on an island in Indonesia, a volcano erupted. It sent a massive plume of ash into the air that eventually encircled the globe. A year later, 1816 became “the year without a summer.” Incessant rains fell here in Norway, Britain, China and the U.S. It snowed 20 inches in July in Boston. Crops failed. Livestock died. People starved. Food riots. Looting. Burning of cities. Floods of refugees. Epidemics of typhus. And it took decades to recover. Millions died in places just like this — the worst famine of the 19th Century. No one saw it coming. With famine, no one ever does, until it’s too late."

"Imponere Pelio Ossam."

"And o'er the hills and far away, Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro' all the world she followed him."

"I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus."

"Over the hills and o'er the main, To Flanders, Portugal and Spain, Queen Anne commands and we'll obey, Over the hills and far away."

"Who digs hills because they do aspire, Throws down one mountain to cast up a higher."

"Daily with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not."

"Pelion imposuisse Olympo."

"Then the Omnipotent Father with his thunder made Olympus tremble, and from Ossa hurled Pelion."

"The mountain was in labour, and Jove was afraid, but it brought forth a mouse."

"Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet This is not Done by Jostling in the Street."

"Round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

"What is the voice of strange command Calling you still, as friend calls friend, With love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wend Over the hills and far away."

"Over the hills, and over the main, To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain; The Queen commands, and we'll obey, Over the hills and far away."