Heading to the mountains and looking for some inspiration? We’re sure our collection of favorite mountain quotes by famous authors, presidents and adventurers will motivate your next climb.
Short Quotes
1. “The mountains are calling, and I must go.” – John Muir
2. “Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.” – William Shakespeare
3. “Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.” – Barry Finlay
4. “Beyond the mountains, more mountains.” – Haitian proverb
5. “The best view comes after the hardest climb.” – Anonymous
6. “You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.” – John Muir
7. “The last word always belongs to the mountain.” – Anatoli Boukreev
8. “Life is a mountain of solvable problems, and I enjoy that.” – James Dyson
9. “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong.” – Sue Fitzmaurice
10. “It is never the fall that kills, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” – Mountain Guide’s Handbook
11. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” – T.S. Eliot
12. “Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.” – Jeffrey Rasley
13. “I learn something every time I go into the mountains.” – Michael Kennedy
14. “Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.” – George Bernard Shaw
15. “When preparing to climb a mountain, pack a light heart.” – Dan May
16. “Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them.” – Swami Vivekananda
17. “Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.” – Hermann Buhl
18. “The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort.” – Paulo Coelho
19. “The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.” – Jeanne Moreau
20. “The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” – Robert M. Pirsig
21. “How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!” – John Muir
22. “Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.” – Sir Martin Convay
23. “The Earth has music for those who listen.” – William Shakespeare
24. “If you think you’ve peaked, find a new mountain.” – Unknown
25. “You can’t move mountains by whispering at them.” – Pink
26. “There is always an adventure waiting in the woods.” – Katelyn S. Bolds
27. “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary
28. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” — Muhammad Ali
29. “Some men see mountains as obstacles. Others as a canvas.” — Richard Paul Evans
30. “Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Perfect Puns
31. “I’ve lost my terrain of thought looking at this view.”
32. “Why can’t you play hide and seek with mountains? They always peak!”
33. “I got so tired while climbing a tall mountain in Nepal. I did not think I would Everest”
34. “Why do mountains feel unappreciated? People take them for granite.”
35. “I hate the weather on Welsh mountains, I always get Snowdon.”
36. “I wood never leaf a hiker behind.”
37. “I’m a succa for nature.”
38. “Why did Caesar go on a hike? Because he wanted to Rome.”
39. “A little more altitude, a little less attitude.”
40. “How do you know what the weather is like at the top of a mountain? You climate.”
Inspirational Quotes
41. “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
42. “Mountains are like a great equalizer. It doesn’t matter who anyone is or what they do.” – Jimmy Chin
43. “So this was what a mountain was like, the same as a person: the more you know, the less you fear.” – Wu Ming-Yi
44. “May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.” – Harley King
45. “Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you” – David McCullough Jr.
46. “The higher you climb on the mountain, the harder the wind blows.” – Sam Cummings
47. “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
48. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” – Jack Kerouac
49. “You’re off to great places, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.” ― Dr. Seuss
50. “The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of the present travel.” – President Theodore Roosevelt
51. “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
52. “When faced with a large project, remember you move a mountain one stone at a time.” – Catherine Pulsifer
53. “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
54. “Mountains know secrets we need to learn. That it might take time, it might be hard, but if you just hold on long enough, you will find strength to rise up.” – Tyler Knott
Quotes About Mountains
55. “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
56. “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
57. “Women need opportunity and encouragement. If a girl can climb mountains, she can do anything positive within her field of work.” – Samina Baig
58. “I like geography best because your mountains & rivers know the secret; Pay no attention to borders.” – Brian Andreas
59. “Mountains teach that not everything in this world can be rationally explained.” – Aleksander Lwow
60. “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
61. “Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.” – Anatoli Boukreev
62. “There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” – Sir Ranulph Fiennes
63. “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
64. “Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.” – Brooke Hampton
65. “When a man is a traveler, the world is his house and the sky is his roof, where he hangs his hat is his home, and all the people are his family.” – Drew Bundini Brown
66. “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.” – Cheryl Strayed
67. “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
68. “I take all day to climb mountains and then spend about 10 minutes at the top admiring the view.” – Sebastian Thrun
Mountain Climbing Quotes
69. “Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.” – Robert Macfarlane
70. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” – John Muir
71. “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
72. “Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.” – Greg Child
73. “In the mountains there are only two grades, you can either do it, or you can’t.” – Rusty Baille
74. “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” – John Muir
75. “Never measure the height of a mountain until you reach the top. Then you will see how low it was.” – Dag Hammarskjöld
76. “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
77. “You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.” – Stanislaw Lem
78. “I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.” – Andrew Garfield
79. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” – Andy Rooney
80. “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
81. “I feel a hint of pity for those who don’t get to experience the crisp air and excitement of mountain climbing. Are they ever really awake?” – Tommy Caldwell
82. “It’s always further than it looks. It’s always taller than it looks. And it’s always harder than it looks.” – The three rules of mountaineering
83. “Let’s not mince words: Everest doesn’t attract a whole lot of well-balanced folks. The self-selection process tends to weed out the cautious and the sensible in favor of those who are single-minded and incredibly driven. Which is a big reason the mountain is so dangerous.” – Jon Krakauer
Quotes About Mountain Biking
84. “Life’s too short not to go big.” – Josh Bender
85. “The slower you go the more likely it is you’ll crash.” – Juli Furtado
86. “When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you’re not riding hard.” – George Bush
87. “A bad day on the mountain bike always beats a good day in the office.” – Mike Brcic
88. “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bike and go for a spin on the road without thought on anything but the ride you are taking” – Arthur Conan Doyle
89. “Never ignore your instinct and you can always push harder. I get inspired when I think about people who have pushed their bodies to the limit.” – Rachel Atherton
90. “Any day I’m out on a bike is a good one.” – Martyn Ashton
91. “Crashing is part of cycling as crying is part of love” – Johan Meseeuw
Smoky Mountain Quotes and Puns
92. “The Smoky Mountains are a rare jewel…Why not have a place where you can still see the stars? There is value to keeping things primitive.” – James Dawson
93. “If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.” – Bill Bynum
94. “There are too many trees in the Smoky Mountains that I haven’t seen yet.” – Anonymous
95. “The Smokies are my home.” – Dolly Parton
96. “Over the Smoky Mountains and through the woods.”
97. “There is no point playing hide and seek with the mountains because they always peak.”
98. “The Smoky Mountains are all the range.”
More Quotes
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- Amazing road trip quotes
- Fun quotes about waterfalls
- Unique sunset quotes
We hope our guide to the best mountain quotes helps with inspiring your next climb!
Please let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.
Happy Climbing,
Mark and Kristen
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Mark and Kristen spent 6 years traveling the world, visiting over 40 countries across 4 continents and more than 30 US states. They created Where Are Those Morgans in 2018 to help others plan the best possible vacations by writing authentic travel and hiking guides based on their real experiences.
Since the arrival of baby Maya in late 2024, Mark and Kristen’s extensive travels have slowed down but they still take plenty of trips. Where Are Those Morgans now helps millions of travelers each year to visit new places and hike new trails through information-packed blog posts and expert travel guidebooks. Read more about Mark and Kristen.