No landscape inspires quite like the mountains. Mountains just have that alluring quality, and climbing to the top can teach you a lot about life. Whilst you dream of the summit and focus on the success of getting to the top, you realise afterwards that the most profound part was the journey and the effort needed to get to there. Success requires effort, perseverance and a determination to keep pushing yourself, just like climbing a mountain!
So here are our favourite inspirational mountain quotes from some of the world’s best mountaineers, writers and nature lovers. We hope they resonate with you to inspire your next adventure!
Inspiring Mountain Quotes
1. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.”
- Andy Rooney
2. “Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”
- Hermann Buhl
3. “You can’t move mountains by whispering at them.”
– Pink
4. “Mountains are like the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter who anyone is or what they do.”
– Jimmy Chin
5. “The hardest mountain to climb is the one within”.
- J. Lynn
6. “What are men to rocks and mountains?”
– Jane Austen
7. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddam mountain.”
- Jack Kerouac
8. “We don’t live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for”.
- George Mallory
9. “Never measure the height of a mountain until you reach the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
- Dag Hammerskjold
10. “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks”
- John Muir
11. “The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”
- Conrad Anker
12. “In the mountains there are only two grades: you can either do it, or you can’t.”
– Rusty Baillie
13. “As a mountain you can’t grow, but as a human I can”
- Edmund Hillary
14. “You can’t conquer a mountain, though it may conquer you.”
– Jimmy Chin
15. “No matter how tall the mountain is, it cannot block the sun.
– Emily Kay McCallister
16. “Everybody wants to reach the peak, but there is no growth on the top of a mountain. It is in the valley that we slog through, the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life’s next peak.”
– Andy Andrews
17. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”
-Edmund Hillary
18. “I think, every time I’m on the mountain, I’m just so grateful to be there”
– Chloe Kim
19. “The mountains are calling and I must go”
- John Muir
20. “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us”.
- John Muir
21. “Mountains know secrets we need to learn. That might take time, it might be hard, but if you just hold on long enough, you will find the strength to rise up”
- Tyler Knott
22. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wears you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe”
- Muhammad Ali
23. “Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing”
- Barry Finlay
24. “Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing”
- John Muir
25. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity”
- John Muir
26. “One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books”
- John Muir
27. “Human life is far more important than getting to the top of a mountain.”
– Edmund Hillary
28. “Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so…. get on your way!”
- Dr Seuss
29. “Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”
- William Blake
30. “You won’t find reasonable men at the top of tall mountains”
- Hunter S Thompson
31. “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.
32. “Mountains are only a problem when they are bigger than you. You should develop yourself so much that you become bigger than the mountains you face.”
– Idowu Koyenikan
33. “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
34. “He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
35. “People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
- Edmund Hillary
36. “The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another.”
– Marianne Williamson
37. “You don’t need to climb a mountain to know that it’s high.”
- Paula Coelho
38. “I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.”
- Andrew Garfield
39. “Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb”
- Greg Child
40. “Accidents on big mountains happen when people’s ambitions cloud their good judgment. Good climbing is about climbing with heart and with instinct, not ambition and pride.”
– Bear Grylls
41. “I learn something every time I go into the mountains.”
– Michael Kennedy
42. “Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.”
– Werner Herzog
43. “The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.”
– Jeanne Moreau
44. “The way up to the top of the mountain is always longer than you think. Don’t fool yourself, the moment will arrive when what seemed so near is still very far.”
– Paulo Coelho
45. “The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life.
They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.”
- Thomas Wolfe
46. “May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.”
– Harley King
47. “When you stand at the bottom of the mountain and look up at the mountaintop, the path looks hard and stony, and the top is obscured by clouds.
But when you reach the top and you look down, you realize that there are a thousand paths that could have brought you to that place.”
– Roz Savage
48. “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.”
– Victoria Erikson
49. “The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain, he is inspired by it.”
- William Arthur Ward
50. “Always be thankful for the little things… even the smallest mountains can hide the most breathtaking views!”
- Nyki Mack
51. ”Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion.”
– Robert Macfarlane
52. “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
53. “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”
- T. S. Eliot
54. “In the mountains, you are sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes told to go home.”
- Fred Beckey
56. “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
57. “If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options.
You can climb it and cross to the other side.
You can go around it.
You can dig under it.
You can fly over it.
You can blow it up.
You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there.
You can turn around and go back the way you came.
Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.”
- Vera Nazarian
58. “I go to seek a great perhaps”
– John Green
59. "You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so.
Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other."
- Theodore Roosevelt
60. “The farthest mountain is the one you think you can never reach and it may even be just by the side of you!”
-Mehmet Murat ildan
61. “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
62. “You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.”
- John Muir
63. “Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than what we could learn from books.”
–John Lubbock
64. “Mountains are the beginning and the end of all-natural scenery.”
- John Ruskin
65. “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”
- John Muir
66. “Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.”
– Brooke Hampton
67. “Life’s a bit like mountaineering - never look down”
- Edmund Hillary
68. “Mountains teach that not everything in this world can be rationally explained.”
– Aleksander Lwow
69. “I like geography best because your mountains & rivers know the secret; Pay no attention to borders.”
– Brian Andreas
70. “So this was what a mountain was like, the same as a person: the more you know, the less you fear.”
– Wu Ming-Yi
71. “In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.”
– Rusty Baille
72. “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”
– John Fox
73. “You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.”
– Stanislaw Lem
74. “Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.”
– Sir Martin Convay
75. “The higher you climb on the mountain, the harder the wind blows.”
– Sam Cummings
76. “Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.”
– Jon Krakauer
77. “When preparing to climb a mountain – pack a light heart.”
– Dan May
78. “Once Everest was determined to be the highest summit on earth, it was only a matter of time before people decided that Everest needed to be climbed.”
– Jon Krakauer
79. “He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
– Friedrich Neitszche
80. “Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.”
– Matthew Arnold
81. “When faced with a large project, remember you move a mountain one stone at a time.”
– Catherine Pulsifer
82. “The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.”
– Rabindranath Tagore
83. “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.”
– Victoria Erikson
84. “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
– Henry David Thoreau
85. “When the wind calls, you know, that somewhere in the mountains, it has found the answers that you were looking for. The pull of the horizon overcomes the inertia of reason… And you just have to go.”
– Vikram Oberoi
86. “There’s a world out there, and you’ve got to look at both sides of the mountain in your lifetime.”
– Bill Janklow
87. “Any coward can sit at home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed.”
– Charles Lindbergh
88. “Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life.”
– John Amatt
89. “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”
– Robert W. Service
90. “My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
– Aldous Huxley
91. “Every great achievement is but a small peak in the mountain range of contributions.”
– Dale T. Mortensen
92. “Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.”
– Thomas W. Higginson
93. “Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them.”
– Swami Vivekananda
94. “Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us, God.”
– John Muir
95. “The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.”
– John Muir
96. “And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as a breathing red pours its tinge upon earth’s shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man’s weak praise should be given God’s attention.”
– Donald Miller
97. “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
– Henry David Thoreau
98. “The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.”
– Georges Simenon
99. “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
– Tennessee Williams
100. How wild it was to let it be.”
– Cheryl Strayed
101. “Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
102. “You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.”
– Tom Hiddleston
103. “Our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible. No one can do more.”
– Loris Malaguzzi
104. “Nature is one of the most underutilized treasures in life. It has the power to unburden hearts and reconnect to that inner place of peace.”
– Janice Anderson
105. “In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”
– Robert Green Ingersoll
106. “Only mountains can feel the frozen warmth of the sun through snow’s gentle caress on their peaks.”
– Munia Khan
107. “I love to sit on a mountain top and gaze. I don’t think of anything but the people I care about and the view.”
– Julian Lennon
108. “Nature is my springboard. From her, I get my initial impetus. I have tried to relate the visible drama of mountains, trees, and bleached fields with the fantasy of wind blowing and changing colors and forms.”
– Milton Avery
109. “If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.”
– Anatole France
110. “Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy.”
– Hamlin Garland
111. “The mountains whisper for me to wander; my soul hikes to the call.”
– Angie Weiland-Crosby
112. “I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm.”
– John Mackey
113. “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
114. “When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.”
– Wilma Rudolph
115. “Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
– Jeffrey Rasley
116. “You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.”
– Rene Dauma
117. “Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
– Khalil Gibran
118. “The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.“
– Robert M. Pirsig
119. “A trail through the mountains, if used, becomes a path in a short time, but, if unused, becomes blocked by grass in an equally short time.”
– Mencius
120. “Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
– Edward Whymper
121. “And if someday, my sons ask, “Dad, why did you choose to climb?” Smiling, I’ll reply, I climbed so you could fly.”
–Mekael Shane
122. “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
123. “You need mountains, long staircases don’t make good hikers.”
– Amit Kalantri
124. “There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation – an ascent above the reach of life’s expectations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgivings.”
– J. Sheridan Le Fanu
125. “Purposes, plans, and achievements of men may all disappear like a yon cloud upon the mountain’s summit; but, like the mountain itself, the things which are of God shall stand fast for ever and ever.”
– Charles Spurgeon
126. “I take all day to climb mountains and then spend about 10 minutes at the top admiring the view.”
– Sebastian Thrun
127. “Highest of heights, I climb this mountain and feel one with the rock and grit and solitude echoing back at me.”
–Bradley Chicho
128. “Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.”
– George Bernard Shaw
129. “You don’t climb mountains without a team, you don’t climb mountains without being fit, you don’t climb mountains without being prepared and you don’t climb mountains without balancing the risks and rewards. And you never climb a mountain on accident – it has to be intentional.”
– Mark Udall
130. “Women need opportunity and encouragement. If a girl can climb mountains, she can do anything positive within her field of work.”
– Samina Baig
131. “Mountains terrify me – they just sit about; they are so proud.”
– Sylvia Plath
132. “Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.”
– Edmund Hillary
133. “Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”
– Theodore Roethke
134. “If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.”
– Peter Benchley
135. “As a professional climber, that’s the question you always get: Why, why, why? It’s an ineffable thing; you can’t describe it.”
– Jimmy Chin
136. “Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.”
– William Shakespeare
137. “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
138. “Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.”
– John C. Maxwell
139. “There are far better things ahead than the ones we leave behind.”
– C.S. Lewis
140. ‘’The most dangerous thing you can do in life is play it safe.’’
– Casey Neistat
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