Nature

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

"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."

"Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one."

"To make a mountain of a mole-hill."

"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."

"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."

"When you reach the top of the mountain, keep climbing."

"People did not always love the mountains. Just a few hundred years ago the high mountains were regarded as horrible, monstrous places filling people with terror and fear. The inhabitants near them were seen as awful demons, subhumans. But this attitude got transformed into just the opposite, especially by Romantic writers and painters in the nineteenth century. Seen by the Romantics, high mountains became places of impossible beauty, where the quality of light and the expansive solitary grandeur of the high peaks opened the heart of the individual. A man climbing a mountain became the image of self-conscious intelligence pitted against the eternal indifference of the forces of nature. Compared to these forces of nature, we are nothing save for the will that moves our limbs. Only that will is truly our own."

"I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts. And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a fitting climax for the loser—for it, too, shakes mountains and minds, stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence we all fear exists. An aspirant saint or hero who lacks some necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing that people will really remember in the end is the end."

"It's a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory."

"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."

"Mountains are (still) a space of freedom, where lawlessness reigns for the good of everyone."

"The Mountain is not merely something eternally sublime. It has a great historical and spiritual meaning for us … From it came the Law, from it came the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount. We may truly say that the highest religion is the Religion of the Mountain."

"Heav'd on Olympus tottering Ossa stood; On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe."

"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."

"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."

"In the late 1800s, Europe had a peaceable bull’s-eye in the northern industrialized countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and the Low Countries), bordered by slightly stroppier Ireland, Austria-Hungary, and Finland, surrounded in turn by still more violent Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Slavic countries. Today the peaceable center has swelled to encompass all of Western and Central Europe, but a gradient of lawlessness extending to Eastern Europe and the mountainous Balkans is still visible. There are gradients within each of these countries as well: the hinterlands and mountains remained violent long after the urbanized and densely farmed centers had calmed down. Clan warfare was endemic to the Scottish highlands until the 18th century, and to Sardinia, Sicily, Montenegro, and other parts of the Balkans until the 20th. It’s no coincidence that the two blood-soaked classics with which I began this book—the Hebrew Bible and the Homeric poems—came from peoples that lived in rugged hills and valleys."

"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!"

"Climate change is expected to exacerbate current stresses on water resources. On a regional scale, mountain snowpack, glaciers, and small ice caps play a crucial role in fresh water availability. Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and the changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world’s population currently lives. There is also high confidence that many semi-arid areas (e.g. the Mediterranean Basin, western United States, southern Africa, and northeastern Brazil) will suffer a decrease in water resources due to climate change. In Africa by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change."

"What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes, And yet never grows?"

"His, through his might, are these snow-covered mountains, and men call sea and Rasā his possession: His arms are these, his are these heavenly regions. What God shall we adore with our oblation?"

"A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity — and sleep finally adds to them liberty."

"Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus."

"Historical Europe is mountainous. The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes, the Slovaks and the Austrians, the Swiss, the Norwegians and the Icelanders, the Scots and the Welsh, half the Rumanians and Ruthenians, the Turks, the South Germans, the Sudeten Germans and the South French are either living in mountains or at least in very hilly countries. Many people see the "real" Europeans in these moutaineers. In these parts of the world traditions have been better preserved; patriarchalism, piety, loyalty, altruism — all the truly "romantic" virtues are here more at home than in the progressive plains."

"And o'er them lowers destruction, high in air, Upon those jutting crags, whose rugged sides, Riven in fragments, and like ruins pil'd, Seem as that giants of those ancient days When earthborn creatures braved th' Olympic Gods, Those of whom fable tells, had torn away Rocks from their solid base, and with strong arm, Parted the mountains: there the avalanche hangs, Mighty, but tremulous; just a light breath Will loosen it from off its airy throne; Then down it hurls in wrath, like to the sound Of thunder amid storms, or as the voice Of rushing waters—death in its career."

"A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain."

"After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it."

"I demens et saevas curre per Alpes, ut pueris placeas et declamation fias!"

"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."

"Because it's there."

"Mountain, because of your elevation, because of your height, Because of your goodness, because of your beauty, Because you wore a holy garment, Because An organized(?) you, Because you did not bring (your) nose close to the ground, Because you did not press (your) lips in the dust."

"Karahashi, Fumi (April 2004). "Fighting the Mountain: Some Observations on the Sumerian Myths of Inanna and Ninurta". Journal of Near Eastern Studies 63 (2): 111–8. JSTOR 422302."

"Humbling huge mountains as if they were piles of litter, ... She brings about the destruction of the mountain lands from east to west."

"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."

"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."

"Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous."

"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."

"So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more."

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

"Alps on Alps in clusters swelling, Mighty, and pure, and fit to make The ramparts of a Godhead's dwelling!"

"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"."

"It has frequently been noticed that all mountains appear doomed to pass through the three stages: An inaccessible peak—The most difficult ascent in the Alps—An easy day for a lady."

"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."

"God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, — which correspond to the physical element in us, — do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond."

"Call nature the grand revelation! Is it more to go to nature and know it than to know God? Are there deeper depths in nature, higher sublimities, thoughts more captivating and glorious? In the mineral and vegetable shapes are there finer themes than in the life of Jesus? In the storms and glorious pilings of the clouds, are there manifestations of greatness and beauty more impressive than in the tragic sceneries of the cross? Nature is the realm of things, the supernatural is the realm of powers."