Blue Ridge Quotes & Sayings

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln

Beyond the wall of the unreal city ... there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night. — Edward Abbey

There in the highlands, clear weather held for much of the time. The air lacked its usual haze, and the view stretched on and on across rows of blue mountains, each paler than the last until the final ranks were indistinguishable from the sky. It was as if all the world might be composed of nothing but valley and ridge. — Charles Frazier

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. — Abraham Lincoln

All the armies of Europe combined could not by force make a track upon the Blue Ridge, or take a drink from the Ohio. If we are to be destroyed, we must do it ourselves. — Abraham Lincoln

Her blue eyes are full of tears, but she is smiling. Her expression is as bright as a newborn Christian.} one my favorite lines from Beyond Sandy Ridge. — Nancy B. Brewer

A man on a hiking trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains came to the top of a hill and saw, just below the crest, a small log cabin. Its aged owner was sitting in front of the door, smoking a corncob pipe, and when the traveler drew close enough he asked the old man patronizingly: "Lived here all your life?" "Nope," the old mountaineer replied patiently. "Not yet." — James Keller

Livy hadn't anticipated meeting anyone and wasn't ready to explain why the last few years
of her life had worn her so much, leaving her searching for home. Surely, Jack didn't care to hear a sob story from a perfect stranger. Actually, Livy wasn't sure she believed that. Something whispered inside her soul that Jack was just the person she needed to tell. — Teresa Tysinger

My father, Cecil Banks Mullis, and mother, formerly Bernice Alberta Barker, grew up in rural North Carolina in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My dad's family had a general store, which I never saw. My grandparents on his side had already died before I started noticing things. — Kary Mullis

No, but there are people I grew up with from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that would give any person on 'Justified' a run for their money in the scary department. — Walton Goggins

Hiding had been effortless in New York City. Getting lost in a sea of people was as easy as stepping onto a crowded Subway car. Sweet Laurel Cove would be very different. Generations of families filled its church pews, ran its farms, and schooled its children. Anonymity was as rare as lightning bugs in wintertime - as her grandmother would say. — Teresa Tysinger

We live in a state with a wonderful climate and plenty of natural beauty, from the shores of Cumberland Island to the Chattahoochee River to the Blue Ridge Mountains. — Roy Barnes

It tastes good, garlic and salt in it,
with the half-sweet white wine of Orvieto
on scanty grass under great trees
where the ramparts cuddle Lucca.
It sounds right, spoken on the ridge
between marine olives and hillside
blue figs, under the breeze fresh
with pollen of Apennine sage.
It feels soft, weed thick in the cave
and the smooth wet riddance of Antonietta's
bathing suit, mouth ajar for
submarine Amalfitan kisses.
It looks well on the page, but never
well enough. Something is lost
when wind, sun, sea upbraid
justly an unconvinced deserter. — Basil Bunting

Their eyes locked. Again, heat rose to Livy's cheeks. He needed to stop looking at her that way. She never should have noticed the captivating hue of his sky-blue eyes. When was the last time a man flustered her like this. Maybe never. — Teresa Tysinger

Marvin thought of his bowel movements as BMs, a phrase he'd heard an army doctor mutter once. His BMs were turning against him, turning violent in a way. He and Eleanor went through the Dolomites and across Austria and nipped into the northwest corner of Hungary and the stuff came crashing out of him, noisy and remarkably dark. But mainly it was the smell that disturbed him. He was afraid Eleanor would notice. He realized this was probably a normal part of every early marriage, smelling the other's smell, getting it over and done with so you can move ahead with your lives, have children, buy a little house, remember everybody's birthday, take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, get sick and die. But in this case the husband had to take extreme precautions because the odor was shameful, it was intense and deeply personal and seemed to say something awful about the bearer.
His smell was a secret he had to keep from his wife. — Don DeLillo

The question rolled around in Vanessa's mind as she drove down Main Street. The sleepy town of Hyattown had changed very little in twelve years. It was still tucked in the foothills of Maryland's Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by rolling farmland and thick woods. Apple orchards and dairy cows encroached as close as the town limits, and here, inside those limits, there were no stoplights, no office buildings, no hum of traffic. — Nora Roberts

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. — Winston Churchill

Cold air rises from the ground as the sun goes down. The eye-burning clarity of the light intensifies. The southern rim of the sky glows to a deeper blue, to pale violet, to purple, then thins to grey. Slowly the wind falls, and the still air begins to freeze. The solid eastern ridge is black; it has a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape. The west flares briefly. The long, cold amber of the afterglow casts clear black lunar shadows. There is an animal mystery in the light that sets upon the fields like a frozen muscle that will flex and wake at sunrise. — J.A. Baker

But if I had to choose between where I live and you, I'd rip up everything I own because the only landscape worth looking is the landscape of the human body. I kiss your Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I kiss your Missouri and Monongahela and Susquehanna and Shenandoah and Rio Grande. I kiss the confluence of all those rivers. I kiss your amber waves of grain. I kiss your spacious skies, your rocket's red glare, your hand I love, your purple mountain'd majesty. But most of all I kiss your head. I kiss the place where we make our decisions. I kiss the place where we keep our resolves. The place where we do our dreams. I kiss the place behind the eyes where we store up secrets and knowledge to save us if we're caught in a corridor on a dark, wintry evening. — John Guare