60 Beautifully Inspirational Mountain Quotes
I’m a sucker for quotes, y’all. If you read a lot of my articles, particularly some of the more personal ones, then you know that I quote things constantly. So I decided to compile 60 of my favorite inspirational mountain quotes of all time into this post.
Seriously though… I need more inspirational mountain quotes in my life! If you have a favorite quote and I don’t have it listed here, tell me about it in the comments.
And next time you need a pick-me-up, or you are feeling not so inspired by life, you can come back to this post and be reminded that we all struggle, and part of life’s big journey is pushing past the challenges that face us.
So here we go… my favorite inspirational mountain quotes!
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60 Beautifully Inspirational Mountain Quotes
Some of these inspirational mountain quotes have a story to go along with them, some of them I read in books, some I heard in talks, and some I can’t remember where I found them, but have them written in my notebook of quotes (yes, I keep a notebook of quotes).
I hope you find that some of these inspirational mountain quotes resonate with you as they have touched me.
MOTIVATIONAL MOUNTAIN QUOTES
“On life and peaks it is the same. With strength we win the grail, but courage is the thing we need to face the downward trail.”
My Story: I have this quote tattooed on my arm. It was early in my adventure journey that I first encountered this quote. I had just completed my first year learning about mountaineering with a climbing club in Utah I had joined. We had done 2 or 3 trips that year, one of them being Mount Whitney’s Mountaineers Route.
I was so inspired by the mountains and the joy they had brought to my life that I saw this beautiful parallel between mountains and life in general. Mountains aren’t just beautiful. Climbing them is an intense struggle, challenge, and sometimes disappointment as well. I read this quote somewhere one night, and I felt it deep in my core.
My life has been this series of achievements, disappointments, struggle, and joy…the same feelings I got when I went out into the wilderness. So I got a tattoo inspired by this quote that says, “On life and mountains, it is the same.”
““Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.”
“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
- Jack Kerouac
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
- John Muir
I feel like I wouldn’t get away with writing a post about inspirational mountain quotes without dropping the most well known one, and while sometimes it’s easy to feel like it is overused… I can’t say that I don’t feel this way every time the weekend rolls around. John Muir captured a strong feeling with that short sentence.
“In the mountains, you are sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes told to go home.”
“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
- Sir Edmund Hillary
“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”
- Dr. Seuss
“I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.”
“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
- Jeffrey Rasley
“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.“
- Robert M. Pirsig
“Never measure the height of a mountain until you reach the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
- Dag Hammerskjold
“The world is big, and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
- John Muir
“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.
“What are men to rocks and mountains?”
- Jane Austen
“Women need opportunity and encouragement. If a girl can climb mountains, she can do anything positive within her field of work.”
- Samina Baig
“If adventure has a final and all-embracing motive, it is surely this: we go out because it is our nature to go out, to climb mountains, and to paddle rivers, to fly to the planets and plunge into the depths of the oceans... When man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.”
- Wilfrid Noyce
“Those at the top of the mountain didn't fall there."
- Marcus Washling
I love the simplicity of this, and it just goes to remind you. It’s easy to look at everyone’s success stories and think it’s all rainbows and unicorns. However, they struggled and had challenges, just like you and me. There are no unicorns.
"Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory."
- Ed Viesturs
Except in the Grand Canyon! There the rangers like to remind you that once you hike down below the rim, up is what is mandatory. :)
“The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, “What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?” and my answer must at once be, “It is no use.” There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.
Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use.
So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy.
And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.”
– George Leigh Mallory
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
- Greg Child
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street.”
- William Blake
“You never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.”
- Lito Tejada-Flores
“To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.”
- Nan Shepherd
“While mountains provide us with challenge and nourish our spirits, they are also powerful and potentially destructive places that must be respected.”
- Mike Hamill
“Those who travel to mountaintops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion.”
- Robert MacFarlane
“The choices we make lead up to actual experiences. It is one thing to decide to climb a mountain. It is quite another to be on top of it.”
- Herbert A. Simon
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“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
- Anatoli Boukreev
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
- Aldous Huxley
I grew up very religious as a child. I don’t really go to church anymore, but I sort of see nature and the outdoors as my new church. It’s where I go to find community (with other climbers and hikers), and it’s where I find my peace.. the deep inner peace. It’s also where I go to confront my greatest challenges, learn humility, and be in awe of beauty.
“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
- Friedrich Neitszche
“Without mountains, we might find ourselves relieved that we can avoid the pain of the ascent, but we will forever miss the thrill of the summit. And in such a terribly scandalous trade-off, it is the absence of pain that becomes the thief of life.”
- Craig D. Lounsbrough
MOUNTAIN NATURE QUOTES
“Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
- John Muir
“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B.
It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.'”
- Sylvia Plath
“Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.”
- Brooke Hampton
“Although I deeply love oceans, deserts and other wild landscapes, it is only mountains that beckon me with that sort of painful magnetic pull to walk deeper and deeper into their beauty. They keep me continuously wanting to know more, feel more, see more.”
- Victoria Erickson
“How can I claim to a greater importance than these alpine flowers, than anything that lives here, or even than the very rocks which eventually become the nourishing soil from which it all has to start? The existence of souls in men? And who can tell me the souls do not take up residence in plants and animals, and even these waters and rocky peaks? A higher evolution for the souls in men? So does that make us more important?
Everything has its place, everything supports everything else, everything is important to itself- to its own development- and to that which it supports. That a humanoid god willed all this into existence simply to glorify himself -a bit too egotistically human- and or for us, his greatest creation, and our pleasure, use or misuse, seems not either to fit with the way I perceive the world while living close to it here at Little Five Lakes.
I wish only to be alive and to experience this living to the fullest, to feel deeply about my days, to feel the goodness of life and the beauty of my world … this is my preference. I am human, and experience the emotions of humanity: elation, frustration, loneliness, love.
And the greatest of these is love. Love for the world and its creatures. Love for life. It comes easily here. I have loved a thousand alpine meadows and mountain peaks.
To be thoroughly aware each day that I am alive, to be deeply sensitive to the world I inhabit and the world that I am , not to roam rough shot of the surface of this planet for achievement but to know where I step and to tread lightly. I would rather my footsteps never be seen and the sound of my voice only be heard by those near and never echo, than leave in my wake the fame of those whom we commonly call great.”
“Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them.
At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled.
One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia.
By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.”
“I’m a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that’s me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I’d die; I don’t know what of, I just knew I’d die.”
- John Marsden
"It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes. We have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again."
- Robin Kimmerer
“I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; Yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.”
“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach of us more than we can ever learn from books.”
- John Lubbock
“You don’t have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”
- Annie Dillard
CLIMBING QUOTES
“It goes, boys.”
- Lynn Hill
The first PERSON – of any gender – to free climb The Nose of El Cap, Lynn Hill let the men know that it was possible with this iconic quote.
“The greatest joy in climbing is to be in charge of one’s own destiny.”
- Sir Chris Bonnington
“There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal.”
- Karyn Kusama
“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.”
- Andy Rooney
“The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”
- Conrad Anker
“There are two kinds of climbers: those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.”
- Alex Lowe
“There are a dozen reasons for climbing, some bad, and I’ve used most of them myself. The worst are fame and money. Commonly people cite exploration or discovery, but that’s rarely relevant in today’s world. The only good reason to climb is to improve yourself.”
- Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia
“Even a bad day of climbing is better than a good day at work.”
- Unknown
I have no idea who said this quote, but I love it! It’s so true.
QUOTES ABOUT BEING BRAVE
“If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve.”
- Emily Dickinson
“Today, climbing has shown me a courageous, strong side of myself, a beautiful bravery. Other days I’ve seen pitiful weakness. I’ve watched myself crawl, belly-flat, across a mountainous landscape of fear.
Climbing has shown me that I am all of these things: strong and weak, brave and cowardly, both immune to and at the mercy of the fear of death, all at the same time. Risk is the fee to learn these lessons. The cost is not negotiable. It is a price that, for now, I pay gladly.”
- Steve House
“We should be less afraid to be afraid.”
- Emily Harrington
“I’ve done a lot of thinking about fear. For me the crucial question is not how to climb without fear―that’s impossible―but how to deal with it when it creeps into your nerve endings.”
- Alex Honnold
“The mountain decides whether you climb or not. The art of mountaineering is knowing when to go, when to stay, and when to retreat.”
- Ed Viesturs
“I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me?
The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.”
“The mountains have rules. They are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul.”
- Walter Bonatti
“I’ve lost my wild heart once. Twice. Too many times to count. I’ve lost her most often when I’ve forgotten myself, when I’ve denied my own truths, when I’ve pushed down the need to create for so long that my heart…she finds better things to do.
The funny thing is, that the losing and the finding are interwoven. We must lose our wild hearts from time to time, I believe. We must so that we know why we need them. We must, so that we remember that in order to be found we must go into the wilderness. Sometimes, it is only in the getting lost that we can find our way back home.”
- Jeanette LeBlanc
“The timid folk beseech me, the wise ones warn me,
They say that I shall never grow to stand so high;
But I climb among the hills of cloud and follow vanished lightning,
I shall stand knee-deep in thunder with my head against the sky.”
- Winifred Welles
Well, I really hope you liked this list, and like I mentioned above…leave me any more of your favorite ones in the comments below! Before we part, I’ll leave you with two final quotes that I LOVE.
“Dare to live the dreams you have dreamed for yourself.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
&
“Live a life more strongly driven by curiosity than by fear” — Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
If I’m being honest, those two quotes are really what this blog is all about. It’s one thing to dream of beautiful mountains, hiking beautiful places, and traveling all around the world. It’s another thing to LIVE those dreams. Let your curiosity and your dreams drive your life… not your fears.
So if you leave this post with just one thing, dare to live your dreams…
And if you’re looking for more motivational quotes posts, check out my 57 Quotes to Inspire Your Solo Travels!
Cheers,
Allison - She Dreams of Alpine
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