Mountain Cliff Quotes & Sayings

Solving a problem for which you know there's an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it's not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley. — Yoko Ogawa

I headed for this white mountain, but was caught in the wind and the mist ... I followed the cliff from north to south, but the wind, against which I was fighting, got even stronger. A break in the coast appeared to my right, just before Dover Castle. I was madly happy. I headed for it. I rushed for it. I was above ground! — Louis Bleriot

To me the mountain mass lies nobly mute,
The whences and the whys I don't dispute.
When Nature by and in herself was founded,
In purity the earthen sphere she rounded.
In summit and in gorge did pleasure seek,
And threaded cliff to cliff and peak to peak;
Then did she fashion sloping hills at peace
And gently down into the vale release.
All greens and grows, and to her gay abundance
Your swirling lunacies are sheer redundance. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If possible, I'd like to avoid that kind of literary burnout. My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, — Haruki Murakami

Like a mountain path that ends at a cliff
I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way — Octavio Paz

Livia's nickname for him was Green Eyes, as his were spectacular - the clearest jade and almost glowing. — Debra Anastasia

Perhaps we will not be great people, chosen by God, but just happy. — Philippa Gregory

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society. — Charles Kuralt

Legends of the Silver Stallion had been told for years now, whenever mountain stockmen met round the campfires or on the winding hill tracks. Songs were sung about him to the cattle and both songs and tales had become even stranger since his supposed death when he vanished through the wind and the night over a great cliff. Tales kept cropping up of a ghost horse seen, or imagined, roaming over the mountains at night, of stockmen waking in a hut at midnight, hearing the tremendous stallion's cry which could only be Thowra's — Elyne Mitchell

I strained to hear a voice from that stone, or grave, as if beneath it were hidden the secret of life and death. I sat on the cliff's edge, above the endless forests and crags and listened to the snakelike hissing of the mountain wind, in a twofold wasteland of loneliness and nonexistence, like the ancient corpse under the slab. — Mesa Selimovic

I think I'm nervous to sign on to any job. — Jamie Campbell Bower

Ride!' went the call, and the individuals of the troop became a single lurching, streaming mass of horseflesh pounding toward the trees.
The first of the men reached the tree line moments before the sound became a roar, the crack and crash of stones, of huge granite boulders large enough to smash into other parts of the cliff and send them driving downwards. The thundering sound, echoing off the walls of the mountain, was frightening and panicked the horses almost more than the boulders at their heels. It was as though the whole surface of the cliff loosened, dissolved into a liquid surface: a rain of stone, a rolling wave of stone. — C.S. Pacat

The earth is black in front of the cliff, and no orchids grow.
Creepers crawl in the brown mud by the path.
Where did the birds of yesterday fly?
To what other mountain did the animals go?
Leopards and pythons dislike this ruined spot;
Cranes and snakes avoid the desolation.
My criminal thoughts of those days past
Brought on the disaster of today. — Wu Cheng'en

Sometimes we scratch, claw and climb so hard to conquer a mountain that, once achieved, we cling to its summit much too long and it ultimately instigates our fall. As we dangle by our fingertips we grasp and claw at what's no more; with a fear of falling into the dim unknown. But, ironically, it's in that very moment that we are empowered to choose. We can stay cliff hanging in our darkened fears clinging to a time that has past us by or we can faithfully and freely fall into the hands of a new destiny. Sometimes, persevering...is simply having the courage to let go. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

You can run," Dorian said in a neutral tone that did nothing to lessen the intensity of his
expression, "but sooner or later, you run out of places to run to. — Nalini Singh

The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history ... Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. — Stephen Harper

According to Montagne legend, the mountain has forever been the abode of giants. Long ago a traveling pair of sorcerers, husband and wife, scaled the cliff into the valley, and the woman cured the giants' chilblains with ointments and the gift of fire. In gratitude, the giants built Chateau de Montagne out of the living rock of Ancienne, and from that castle the couple founded the kingdom of Montagne, using their magic to shield the country and its people from harm. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily - a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest.
'Here we go, baby!' he shouts, teeth bared. 'Now I'm going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain! ... '
There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock - and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage. ("Jane Browns Body") — Cornell Woolrich

I don't believe in the hero that sets out to climb a mountain and achieves it with no setbacks. I he does, he obviously didn't set his goals high enough and shouldn't even have anything to be proud of. He didn't challenge himself enough. He might have learned a thing or two, but the real lessons are taught when you're balancing on the very edge, with one foot over the cliff, everyone expecting you to fall. That's when you realise your potential. Or rather, how far away from your own potential you actually are. — Charlotte Eriksson

There's something pretty awesome about staying with a character and growing. — America Ferrera

I was an early adopter of the 'Hunger Games.' I read them before they were best sellers - I was on the pre-order wait list for 'Mockingjay' on Amazon. — Elizabeth Banks

Don't look back, girl," Gravier yells as we ride off. "You're not going that way! — Celia Mcmahon

If economic catastrophe does come, will it be a time that draws Christians together to share every resource we have, or will it drive us apart to hide in our own basements or mountain retreats, guarding at gunpoint our private stores from others? If we faithfully use our assets for his kingdom now, rather than hoarding them, can't we trust our faithful God to provide for us then? — Randy Alcorn

In a world full of fossils, the slightest movement of a pebble on the slope of the cliff is nearly enough to bring on a whole series of heart attacks-so you can imagine what happens when someone dynamites the whole mountain! — Muriel Barbery

Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race. — Theodore Roosevelt

I walk lighter, stumble less, with more spring in leg and lung, keeping my center of gravity deep in the belly, and letting that center 'see.' At these times, I am free of vertigo, even in dangerous places; my feet move naturally to firm footholds, and I flow. But sometimes for a day or more, I lose this feel of things, my breath is high up in my chest, and then I cling to the cliff edge as to life itself. And of course it is this clinging, the tightness of panic, that gets people killed: 'to clutch,' in ancient Egyptian, 'to clutch the mountain,' in Assyrian, were euphemisms that signified 'to die' (125). — Peter Matthiessen

Images flashed through his mind. He saw Nico and his sister on a snowy mountain cliff in Maine, Percy Jackson protecting them from the manticore. Percy's sword gleamed in the dark. He'd been the first demigod Nico had ever seen in action. Later at Camp Half-Blood, Percy took Nico by the arm, promising to keep his sister Bianca safe. Nico believed him. Nico looked into his sea-green eyes and though, How can he possibly fail? This is a real hero. — Rick Riordan

The water was tripping over itself, splashing and hypnotizing, and I tried to fix my mind on a chunk of it, like each little ripple was a life that began far away in a high mountain source and had traveled miles pushing forward until it arrived at this spot before my eyes, and now without hesitation that water-life was hurling itself over the cliff. I wanted my body in all that swiftness; I wanted to feel the slip and pull of the currents and be dashed and pummeled on the rocks below ... — Justin Torres

Making mountains out of molehills sells more books than a study of molehills. — Cliff Asness