Quotes & Sayings About Mountain Air

You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top. — Blaise Pascal

But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. — C.S. Lewis

He is only one of a million no, a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, then we could tell in a hundred years. The word amazing isn't much of a word for how amazing it is. The fact is that there are more stories in the world than there are fish in the sea or birds in the air or lies among politicians. You could be sad at how many stories go untold, but you could also be delighted at how many stories we catch and share in delight and wonder and astonishment and illumination and sometimes even epiphany. — Brian Doyle

A solitary figure stood gazing outward, at the edge of the crenellations ringing the circumference of the great tower soaring up from the top of the massive, mountain-citadel. Shrouded with a regal, proud air, The Unifier, the Lord of far more than Avanor, regarded the heart of His worldly dominion with an invigorating feeling of growing mastery. Yes there was a deep concern weighing upon His mind, of a nature that rarely manifested to His pervasive senses. — Stephen Zimmer

This thing: information got abolished sometime in the twentieth century, can't say just when; stands to reason, that's part of the information that got abolsh, abolished. Since then we've been living in a fairy-story. Got me? Everything happens by magic. Us faeries haven't a fucking notion what's going on. So how do we know if it's right or wrong? We don't even know what it is. So what I thought was, you can either break your heart trying to work it all out, or you can go sit on a mountain, because that's where all the truth went, believe it or not, it just upped and ran away from these cities where even the stuff under our feet is all made up, a lie, and it hid up there in the thin thin air where the liars don't dare come after it in case their brains explode. — Salman Rushdie

If you're gonna be broke, you could pick plenty of worse places to do it than Tacoma. It's not too hot; it's not too cold. It's as green as any place could want to be. You've got the bay on one side and the mountains on the other. Mount Rainier is as big and beautiful a mountain as anybody would ever care to see. When you could see it through the haze, I mean. Even when it's not raining around there, the air's damp. No wonder it's all so green. Tacoma — Harry Turtledove

Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks. — Anne Lamott

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl. — John Burroughs

Just as legendary rivers were used to represent the flow of life, so Mount Athos is a handy image to show human vulnerability. Its minerals themselves reminding us that ours is a planet constituted around Nature's awesome violence! Struggling to survive then, is integral to our existence. Literature on these issues, transforming rock and boulder into a subjective mountain, where fleshly mountaineers set forth, in the blinding brilliance of an alpine dawn, to ascend their own transgressions, remains telling. Breathing in, when nearing the top, to smell the pure air of spiritual comprehension: of heady intrinsic freedom, only to descend, once more, into the obscure and the pedestrian; albeit existentially transformed! In this way, indeed, Mount Athos transfigures many a man. — David William Parry

concept: me, sitting on top of a grassy mountain, taking deep breaths of fresh, pure air. i lay back and watch the clouds all day. there's no rush here — L.J. Buchanan

He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here. — Eowyn Ivey

Nineteen hundred meters up there is completely different from1,900 any place else. There's no air, there's no oxygen. There's no vegetation, there's no life. There's no life. Rocks. Any other climb there's vegetation, grass and trees. Not there on the Ventoux. It's more like the moon than a mountain. — Lance Armstrong

The flash of rain, the shining rainbow riding completely around the plane, the lift over mountain ridges, the steady, pure air at dawn take-offs ... It was so alive and rich a life that any other conceivable choice seemed dull, prosaic, and humdrum. — Dean Smith

...Following the bird you lay into a deep turn in the steepening descent. It [the snow] is super soft, bottomless and amazingly light, yet supportive. It feels like something in between floating on top, and within the top of a deep-pile carpet as you link turn after turn down the open glacier. Each side of you are fellow riders, though not too close, whooping with exhilaration and flying down, down towards the valley below. The pitch gets steeper and the slope widens out, with seemingly endless space to the sides and an untracked oblivion ahead and beneath you. Each turn is delicious softness; you can almost feel every snow crystal reacting with the base of your skis. Those skis feel like extensions of your feet, and you connect with the mountain through a portal link created by the snowpack, as the spray from the turn hangs in the air behind you... — Steve Baldwin

Ladies and gentleman," he said over the speakers, "welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I'd like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won't do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain. — Derek Landy

Now by the Path I Climbed, I Journey Back

Now by the path I climbed, I journey back.
The oaks have grown; I have been long away.
Taking with me your memory and your lack
I now descend into a milder day;
Stripped of your love, unburdened of my hope,
Descend the path I mounted from the plain;
Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope
And stonier, now that I go down again.
Warm falls the dusk; the clanking of a bell
Faintly ascends upon this heavier air;
I do recall those grassy pastures well:
In early spring they drove the cattle there.
And close at hand should be a shelter, too,
From which the mountain peaks are not in view. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on; The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun. — Heinrich Heine

It's not so bad," Bast said. "We just climb our way down to the river through a few miles of sand, cacti, and rattlesnakes, looking out for the Border Patrol, human traffickers, magicians, and demons - and summon Nephthys."
Sadie whistled. "Well, I'm excited!"
"Agh," Khufu agreed miserably. He sniffed the air and snarled.
"He smells trouble," Bast translated. "Something bad is about to happen."
"Even I could smell that," I grumbled, and we followed Bast down the mountain. — Rick Riordan

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

It wasn't the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness. — George L. Ayers

The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, they speak to me. The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me. The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning, the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me. The strength of the fire, the taste of the salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me. And my heart soars. — Chief Dan George

I know for sure that love saves me. And that it is here to save us all. I know it's a sense, it's more close to us than air, more loud to us than hearing. I know it. I know that we can sit in it. Yes, love honey, and you know by that, I don't mean mush, or any, I don't mean romance, or sentimentality. I mean something is so, it can raise the dead. It can make a mountain move. I know it. I haven't done it, but i know it. As surely as I'm sitting here. — Maya Angelou

The brilliant sunshine lay like a golden shawl over the rich mountain city that morning my train set me down for the first time in my life in young Denver. The names of strange railroads incited me from the sides of locomotives at the depot. As I passed up 17th Street a babble of voices from the doors of clothing stores, auction houses and pawn broker shops coaxed and flattered me with 'Sir' and 'Young Gentleman'. There was something in the streets I walked that morning, in the costly dress of the ladies in passing carriages, in the very air that swept down from the mountains, something lavish, dashing and sparkling, like Lutie Brewton herself, and I thought I began to understand a little of her fever for this prodigal place that was growing by leaps and bounds. — Conrad Richter

High on its flanks is a complex of caves where the kings and heroes of the Mountain Kingdoms have been laid to rest, their bodies preserved by the sub-zero temperatures and thin, high-altitude air. — Philip Reeve

Yam raised an army of sea creatures designed to march on Mount Aqraa, to destroy Baal. He created some of the craziest monstrosities every seen: lobsters rode four-legged tuna like proud cavalry, sword fish infantry marched onward in perfect step, biped whales thundered towards the mountain, while winged sharks provided air support. An elite group of electric eel assassins were armed with both their innate ability to shock in melee combat and throwing star fish for long range skirmishes. — Dylan Callens

If he cannot be infinite - his lov emeeting its eventual exhaustion, his light its shadows - this is the nature of landscapes. The forest meets mountain, the sea the shore. Brain meets bone, meets skin, meets hair; meets air. Day would not be, without night. Every limit, a wise woman once wrote, is a beginning as well as an ending. — Lauren Groff

The last day i was home i took the rental car up old 14 behind the Sandia Mountains. as i drove north toward Santa Fe past Madrid I rolled the window down halfway and let the cold, brisk, February air come into the car. I smelled the pinon trees and the damp earth. The Gray came over me. My life flashed through my heart in one deep rush of feeling. When I made the turn around the mountain to the west, the mesas and valleys spread out before me under the orange and gold horizon. The sun hit me like a wave that flooded out the past and dissolved any idea of the future, and I felt okay and whole for about twenty minutes. — Marc Maron

I breathe in the soft, saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes, fireweed and wood fern, marsh hawks and meadow voles, marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats of hermit thrushes and gave voices to humpback whales, the same particles of air that lifted the wings of bald eagles and buzzed in the flight of hummingbirds, the same particles of air that rushed over the sea in storms, whirled in high mountain snows, whistled across the poles, and whispered through lush equatorial gardens ... air that has passed continually through life on earth. I breathe it in, pass it on, share it in equal measure with billions of other living things, endlessly, infinitely. — Richard Nelson

To a person sitting quietly at home, Rocky Mountain traveling, like Rocky Mountain scenery, must seem very monotonous; but not so to me, to whom the pure, dry mountain air is the elixir of life. — Isabella Bird

It was like that moment when the roller coaster has reached the top of its first mountain, hesitates a moment . . . tilts . . . plunges . . . and you fall with a sudden blast of hot summer air in your face and a pressure against your chest and your stomach floating somewhere behind you. In — Stephen King

His mind and his flesh had separated, his brain had sat high and frightened above the mule of his body, a beast of burden that hopefully would make it alone over the treacherous mountain pass of Prison 33. But now as a woman ran a warm washcloth along the arch of his foot, the sensation was allowed to rise up, up into his brain , and it was okay to perceive again, to recognize forgotten parts of his body as they hailed him. His lungs were more than air bellows. His heart, he believed now, could do more than move blood. — Adam Johnson

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it. — Arthur Machen

The World's New Age hath dawned. The sun is bright in heaven, for Balder hath returned. Earth rises a second time, from the deep sea; it rises clad with green verdure. The sound of falling waters fills the morning air. High soars the eagle; from the mountain ridge he espies the fish. . . . — Donald A. Mackenzie

The air is part of the mountain, which does not come to an end with its rock and its soil. It has its own air; and it is to the quality of its air that is due the endless diversity of its colourings. Brown for the most part in themselves, as soon as we see them clothed in air the hills become blue. Every shade of blue, from opalescent milky-white to indigo, is there. They are most opulently blue when rain is in the air. Then the gullies are violet. Gentian and delphinium hues, with fire in them, lurk in the folds. — Nan Shepherd

Mind you, physical training doesn't necessarily mean going to an expert for advice. One doesn't have to make a mountain out of a molehill. Get out in the fresh air and walk briskly - and don't forget to wear a smile while you're at it. Don't over-do. Take it easy at first and build on your effort day by day. — Douglas Fairbanks

There's a hum that happens inside my head when I hit a certain writing rhythm, a certain speed. When laying track goes from feeling like climbing a mountain on my hands and knees to feeling like flying effortlessly through the air. Like breaking the sound barrier. everything inside me just shifts. I break the writing barrier. And the feeling of laying track changes, transforms, shifts from exertion into exultation. — Shonda Rhimes

For the only slavery is desire, and he who learns to let go, to climb the wind-swept hills of self-becoming, naked of all possessions and desire, will drink the mountain air of freedom, and find the peace that lies not in the satisfaction but in the controlling of desire. — Christmas Humphreys

Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained. — John Ruskin

The cool air Edie speaks of? It drifts down off the mountain, unraveling itself through trees, dipping its fingers in the streams. It comes in through the back door and through the windows cast open for it. The fat possums shiver and return to their meals. It lifts up the months on the calendar and leafs through the newspaper pattern in a pile on the table. It fills up the yellow kitchen and overflows into the hallway and spills into the rooms.
Rose closes her eyes again and smiles. — Karen Foxlee

She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. "Our friend is behind us again and he's coming up fast. Closing the distance."
Then he knows we're on to him."
Christ! He's got a gun, Red! He's stuck his arm out the window."
Don't worry," Red told her. "Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he'd be lucky to hit that mountain."
There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console.
Unless," Red continued thoughtfully, "that's Orvid Crayle behind us. He's very good. — Michael Flynn

Bleak as the scene was, though, there was growing joy in Inman's heart. He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the lead of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast propect to one far mountain. It stood apart from the sky only as the stroke of a poorly inked pen, a line thin and quick and gestural. But the shape slowly grew plain and unmistakable. It was to Cold Mountain he looked. He had achieved a vista of what for him was homeland. — Charles Frazier

Will we have pets?" I bite back the question regarding kids. While this might be a fun fantasy, imagining being responsible for something like that is terrifying.
"Sure." Noah stays near the fire on one bent knee and occasionally pokes it to keep the dwindling flames alive. "I had a dog once."
"What type?"
"A mix of some sort. Part Lab, part something smaller than Lab. Its paws were too big for its body, so it skidded across the kitchen floor."
"Is that what you want?"
"If we're going to live alone on a mountain, we need a guard dog. A German shepherd. Something like that."
"Guard dog?" Not what I had in mind for the fantasy. "We need something cute and cuddly." I squish my fingers in the air as if I have the little puff ball in my hands. "It can sleep in our bed."
"No fucking way, Echo. I'm not sharing my bed with a dog. — Katie McGarry

In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.
At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.
Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home. — Patricia McCormick

At the edge of heaven, tatters of autumn
Cloud. After ten thousand miles of clear
Lovely morning, the west wind arrives. Here,
Long rains haven't slowed farmers. Frontier
Willows air thin kingfisher colors, and
Red fruit flecks mountain pears. As a flute's
Mongol song drifts from a tower, one
Goose climbs clear through vacant skies. — Du Fu

To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air. — Mary Oliver

In nature, we find so may things. At the water's edge, atop a mountain, or in the middle of a park, I watch my children flourish in who they are. With all the distractions, toys, and walls out of the way, the essence of who they are just shines. When I remember to pay attention, I see it radiating so strongly that I can't help but be brought right into it myself. My children are experts on breathing, on living; they know how to do it. And the open air? Why, that's breath itself. When I find myself in the midst of unsettling chaos-full of more commitments and expectations that we can really handle-I need to look no further than my little ones for the answer to what I've forgotten: Stop. Breathe. Listen. Then we head straight to the beach, or right to the woods, and play until we find ourselves restored. — Amanda Blake Soule

The weight of that name
Is sometimes a mountain
With a cave of secrets

And sometimes a feather
Floating on a puff of air — Gabrielle Prendergast

Travis Hunter's blood froze in his veins at the piercing female scream that echoed through the forest. He was moving just as the sharp scent of blood tinted the crisp mountain air mixed with the rancid smell of the rogue mutants. — Lia Davis

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. — D.T. Suzuki

Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these
signs:
They are black vesper's pageants. — William Shakespeare

In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky ... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights. — Erik Fosnes Hansen

When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? — Joseph Rodman Drake

There was a time, before the battles between men and dragons, when the Veiled Valley was green and covered with trees, berry bushes, and wildflowers. Birdsong filled the air from early morning until sunset. Sunriseside, a mountain poked its peak above a vast, dark forrest. At the base of its tree-covered slopes, far below our ancestors' cave, a lodge housed a large family of Valley folk. — Susan Bass Marcus

Like go for a walk, say a little prayer
Take a deep breath of mountain air
Put on my glove and play some catch
It's time that I make time for that
Wade the shore and cast a line
Look up a long lost friend of mine
Sit on the porch and give my girl a kiss
Start livin', that's the next thing on my list. — Toby Keith

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it's so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling. — Terry Pratchett

It is often said of people with second sight that their soul leaves the body. That doesn't happen to the glacier. But the next time one looks at it, the body has left the glacier, and nothing remains except the soul clad in air ... the glacier is illuminated at certain times of the day by a special radiance and stands in a golden glow with a powerful aureole of rays, and everything becomes insignificant except it. Then it's as if the mountain is no longer taking part in the history of geology but has become iconic ... A remarkable mountain. At night when the sun is off the mountains the glacier becomes a tranquil silhouette that rests in itself and breathes upon man and beast the word never, which perhaps means always. Come, waft of death. — Halldor Laxness

The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smoulders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive. I am filled with dreams and mysteries. I am all sun and air and sparkle. I am vitalized, organic. — Jack London

Torrent of light and river of air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen,
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain air stung his lips. She was driving too fast on this road that had once been a forest. Early humans had lived in it. They studied fire and the movement of the sun. They read the clouds and the moon and tried to understand the human mind His father had tried to melt him into a Polish forest when he was five years old. He knew he must leave no trace or trail of his existence because he must never find his way home. That was what his father had told him. You cannot come home. This was not something possible to know but he had to know it all the same — Deborah Levy

There is mountain air in this room. It's cool and moist and almost fragrant. One deep breath makes me ready for the next one and then the next one and with each deep breath I feel a little readier until I jump out of bed and pull up the shade and let all that sunlight in - brilliant, cool, bright, sharp and clear. — Robert M. Pirsig

The silence of a place where there were once horses
is a mountain
and I have seen by lightning that ever mountain
once fell from the air
ringing
like the chime of an iron shoe ... — W.S. Merwin

But after a sojourn in the Adirondacks restored his health, he became persuaded of the curative powers of the mountain air and devoted himself to the study of respiratory problems. He — Jennet Conant

I close my eyes again. There's the smell of mountain snow on the air. I shiver. I would have brought a coat if I'd known I was going to be in Wyoming today. I'm a wuss about cold.
You're my California flower, I remember Tucker saying to me once. We were sitting on the pasture fence at the Lazy Dog, watching his dad break in a colt, the leaves in the trees red just like they are today. I started shivering so hard my teeth actually began to chatter, and Tucker laughed at me and called me that - his delicate California flower - and wrapped me in his coat. — Cynthia Hand

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not. — Neil Gaiman

I left them to it, the pointing of fingers on maps, the tracing of mountain villages, the tracks and contours on maps of larger scale, and basked for the one evening allowed to me in the casual, happy atmosphere of the taverna where we dined. I enjoyed poking my finger in a pan and choosing my own piece of lamb. I liked the chatter and the laughter from neighbouring tables. The gay intensity of talk - none of which I could understand, naturally - reminded me of left-bank Paris. A man from one table would suddenly rise to his feet and stroll over to another, discussion would follow, argument at heat perhaps swiftly dissolving into laughter. This, I thought to myself, has been happening through the centuries under this same sky, in the warm air with a bite to it, the sap drink pungent as the sap running through the veins of these Greeks, witty and cynical as Aristophanes himself, in the shadow, unmoved, inviolate, of Athene's Parthenon. ("The Chamois") — Daphne Du Maurier

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

You find what you love and you learn everything about it. You bet your life on what you know and run from safety, off your mountain into the air, trusting the Principle of Flight to bring you soaring up on lift you cannot see with your eyes. — Richard Bach

Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share. — George Gordon Byron

It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her. — Oscar Wilde

You climb only because the mountain allows it. If it says wait, then you must wait, and when it allows you to go, then you must struggle and strain in the thin air with all your might. Listening to the mountain and having patience on it are the keys to survival. — Bear Grylls

Her chest full of crisp air and inspiration, her feet atop a forgettable mountain where the stars make you feel insignificant and important all at once.
And she sang. — Ben Montgomery

Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying. — C.S. Lewis

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it. — Edith Wharton

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count. — Neil Davies

The art of the great historic civilizations never impress us as much as an Eskimo harpoon or a mask from the South Pacific. The contact is physical, and the feeling we experience is very much like acute anxiety. Inner or outer space, the world below or beyond, becomes a great weight pressing down upon us. Each work is a solid block of time, time standing still, time more massive than a mountain, despite the fact that it is as intangible as air or thought. The handiwork of primitive peoples reveals the time before time. — Octavio Paz

I take the paraglider to the mountain or I roll Daisy out of her hangar and I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam. — Richard Bach

For I believe that climate does thus react on man
as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. — Henry David Thoreau

And there in the blue air I saw for the first time, far off, the great snowy tops of the Rocky Mountains. I had to get to Denver at once. — Jack Kerouac

I lost my voice and my best friend too
On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue,
The cold rain fell where beams had shone,
So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone.

But I missed my friend, I missed my voice,
And my heart still whispered of another choice
To break out of my binding, safe, and warm,
And see what the world looked like after the storm.

So I struggled free and was greeted by
Colorful brushstrokes across the sky,
The melody of the summer breeze
And blue wings like mine in hazel trees.

On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade,
We gathered together in cool, green shade,
And told our stories, beginnings to ends,
And found our song in the hearts of new friends. — Elaine Vickers

He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air. — Cormac McCarthy

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. — Peter Matthiessen

Up and down, up and down, a ladder of choices leading to the next choice, and the next, until suddenly you've run out of choices, and ladder, and you find time as rare and thin as air on a mountain. Then it's oops, sorry, turn's over. — Lauren Oliver

Ama wipes her hands on her apron, looks up at our old roof with new eyes, and lifts the baby from his basket. She twirls him in the air, her skirts flying around her ankles the way the clouds swirl around the mountain cap
her laughter fresh and strange and musical to my ears. — Patricia McCormick

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country
indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky
provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut ...
... Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that. — Annie Proulx

But we have not understood the world; how its way
is to destroy without destroying, the way air
levels a mountain; things fly apart in a vacuum...
It wears us to the hard thing we cannot help being;
and if the only hard thing is our determination
not to be hard, it wears us down to that. — Alan Williamson

I ride over my beautiful ranch. Betwen my legs is a beautiful horse.
The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame.
Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing.
The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky.
I have everything to make me glad I am alive. — Jack London

An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded in flight, the earth mutated
nearly
into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted. Long before she ever encountered the mountain, Allie was aware of its brooding presence in her soul. — Salman Rushdie

America is ripe for lies and lethargy. The pure mountain air is going and gone. It is a huge burden and a sadness for us all. — Ralph Steadman

I ... am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air. — John Muir

The wind then became calmed in some degree: when, after sun-rise, we perceived that the mountain we had seen was in the air, and that we could see light between it and the sea. I was much astonished at this: but, seeing the sailors in the utmost perturbation, and bidding farewell to one another, I said, Pray what is the matter? They said, What we supposed to be a mountain, is really a Rokh,1 and if he sees us, we shall assuredly perish, there being now between us and him a distance of ten miles only. But God, in his goodness, gave us a good wind, and we steered our course in a direction from him, so that we saw no more of him; nor had we any knowledge of the particulars of his shape. — Ibn Battuta

The clouds behind the castle darkened and rolled, embracing the mountain and the white towers. And as the princess became more animated, the clouds rolled faster and faster. They twisted and deepened in color until a deafening crack sliced through the air. — Brittney Joy

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. — David McCullough Jr.

The whole life-effort of man is to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain life, cloud life, thunder life, air life, earth life, sun life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator is the root meaning of religion. — D.H. Lawrence

At the end of the world there lies a mountain so high it makes you dizzy even to think about it. It is as black as soot, as smooth as silk, terribly steep, and where there should be a bottom, there are only clouds. But high up on the peak stands the Hobgoblin's House, and it looks like this." And Snufkin drew a house in the sand.
"Hasn't it got any windows?" asked Sniff.
"No," said Snufkin, "and it hasn't got a door either, because the Hobgoblin always goes home by air riding on a black panther. He goes out every night and collects rubies in his hat."
"What did you say?" asked Sniff, with his eyes popping out of his head. "Rubies! Where does he get them from?"
"The Hobgoblin can change himself into anything he likes," Snufkin answered, "and then he can crawl under the ground and even down onto the sea bed where buried treasure lies. — Tove Jansson

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives. — Kilroy J. Oldster

You've grown so tall, Mageling, in these four years," she said, as if she hadn't really looked at him for a while. "And handsome. Are you taller than your father was?"
"So I'm told. It's hard for me to remember now." That was a lie. He remembered - exactly - the measure of his father's arm around his shoulders, the distance between them when he leaned down to speak at Ash's level, even the scent of him - leather and sweat and fresh mountain air. — Cinda Williams Chima

Boneless with relief, she let him pull her forward, into the open air, into his lap. And in this wild darkness, in the middle of an empty earth, she grieved for both of them - indeed, for every human in this wretched world, who must face the trials life offered, negotiate the changes wrought by time. There was so little joy to cling to, so few certainties. Yet humans continued to endure. Continued to hope. The undeniable compulsion to survive powered them onward, like Sisyphus on his mountain. — Meredith Duran

That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey. — Casey Affleck

Have you ever climbed a mountain in full armour? That's what we did, him going first the whole way up a tiny path into the clouds, with drops sheer on both sides into nothing. For hours we crept forward like blind men, the sweat freezing on our faces, lugging skittery leaking horses, and pricked all the time for the ambush that would tip us into death. Each turn of the path it grew colder. The friendly trees of the forest dropped away, and there were only pines. Then they went too, and there just scrubby little bushes standing up in ice. All round us the rocks began to whine the cold. And always above us, or below us, those filthy condor birds, hanging on the air with great tasselled wings ... Four days like that; groaning, not speaking; the breath a blade in our lungs. Four days, slowly, like flies on a wall; limping flies, dying flies, up an endless wall of rock. A tiny army lost in the creases of the moon. — Peter Shaffer

If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out. — Criss Jami