Mountains are some of the most beautiful places on earth — and as a result, is it any surprise we’re often at a loss for words for how to describe these wondrous places?
As a lifelong reader and lover of the English language (I majored in it and creative writing back in college, and I still write poetry to this day!) and am amateur mountaineer, I’ve gathered my favorite mountain quotes for you.
Use these quotes about mountains however you like — they make fantastic mountain captions for Instagram, inspiring quotes to write on a vision board or bullet journal,
Table of Contents
Best Mountain Quotes
“You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.”
— John Muir
“It is not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves.”
– Sir Edmund Hillary
“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
“Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Nothing lives long, Only the earth and mountains.”
– Dee Brown
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
– John Muir
“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
“Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.”
– William Shakespeare
“Everyone wants to live on the top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.”
— Andy Rooney
Mountain Climbing Quotes
“Good climbing is about climbing with heart and with instinct, not ambition and pride.”
— Bear Grylls
“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
“The greatest joy in climbing is to be in charge of one’s own destiny.”
— Chris Bonnington
“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
“When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.”
— Edmund Hillary
“The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”
— Conrad Anker
“Climbing is my art; I get so much joy and gratification from it.”
– Jimmy Chin
“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
“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”
— Yvon Chouinard
“I don’t want to write about climbing or talk about it or photograph it or think about it; all I want to do is do it.”
— Chuck Pratt
“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
“The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain; he is inspired by it.”
– William Arthur Ward
“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.
“Climbing is as close as we can come to flying.”
— Margaret Young
“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.”
— Robert M. Pirsig
“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
“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
“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that godd*** mountain.”
– Jack Kerouac
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
— Greg Child
“When preparing to climb a mountain – pack a light heart.”
— Dan May
“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 Simon
“Highest of heights, I climb this mountain and feel one with the rock and grit and solitude echoing back at me.”
– Bradley Chicho
Mountain View Quotes
“Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.”
— John Ruskin
“No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.”
— Ansel Adams
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
– Edward Abbey
“The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls.”
– Lori Lansens
“A lone peak of high point is a natural focal point in the landscape, something by which both travelers and local orient themselves. In the continuum of landscape, mountains are discontinuity — culminating in high points, natural barriers, unearthly earth.”
― Rebecca Solnit
“The mountains were so wild and so stark and so very beautiful that I wanted to cry.”
— Jane Wilson-Howarth
“I take all day to climb mountains and then spend about 10 minutes at the top admiring the view.”
– Sebastian Thrun
“Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.”
— Haruki Murakami
“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
“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
“When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.”
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Mountaineering Quotes
“Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.”
– Edmund Hillary
“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.”
– Edmund Hillary
“I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.”
– Edmund Hillary
“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 those things: strong and weak, brave and cowardly, both immune to and at the mercy of the death of death, all at the same time.”
— Steve House
“I think, every time I am on the mountain, I am just so thankful to be there.”
— Chloe Kim
“I had discovered that I am the kind of person who cannot live comfortably, tolerably, on all-flat terrain. For the sake of inner equilibrium there has to be at least one mountain range on at least one of the four quarters of my horizon-and not more than a day’s walk away.”
― Edward Abbey
“The mainstream audience has a certain picture of what climbing is all about: man conquering mountain. But you can’t conquer a mountain, though it may conquer you.”
– Jimmy Chin
“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
“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
“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.”
― Robert MacFarlane
“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
— Anatoli Boukreev
“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
Mountain Top Quotes & Summit Quotes
“Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.”
— Sir Martin Conway
“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
“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
“Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“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 Daumal
“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
“Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.”
– Barry Finlay
“Don’t pay attention to the size of the mountain in front of you. Rather, think about what the view from the summit is going to be like.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“Mountain hikes instilled in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit or peak.”
— Paul D. Boyer
“To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.”
– Nan Shepherd
“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
“The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another.”
— Marianne Williamson
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
– Frank Herbert
“I like being near the top of a mountain, One can’t get lost here.”
– Wislawa Szymborska
“Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion.”
– Robert MacFarlane
“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
“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
Short Mountain Quotes
“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”
— John Muir
“The mountains were there and so was I.”
— Maurice Herzog
“I go to seek a great perhaps”
– John Green
“We are in the world where the longing mountains are the most grounded.”
― Sorin Cerin
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”
— William Blake
“The mountains are a demanding, cold place, and they don’t allow for mistakes.”
– Conrad Anker
“No matter how tall the mountain is, it cannot block the sun.”
– Emily Kay McAllister
“The mountain affords perspective.”
― Thomas Lloyd Qualls
“Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them.”
– Swami Vivekanand
“How wild it was, to let it be.”
— Cheryl Strayed
“Throw me to the mountains, I’ll be at peace as long as I will live.”
― Shashank Rayal
“May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.”
– Harley King
“Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”
– Theodore Roethke
“Clouds come and go, the mountain remains.”
― Meeta Ahluwalia
“You never climb a mountain on accident – it has to be intentional.”
– Mark Udall
“So this was what a mountain was like, the same as a person: the more you know, the less you fear.”
– Wu Ming-Yi
“What are men to rocks and mountains?”
— Jane Austen
“I learn something every time I go into the mountains.”
– Michael Kennedy
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational Mountain Life Quotes
“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
“When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.”
– Wilma Rudolph
“I like the mountains because they make me feel small… They help me sort out what’s important in life.”
― Mark Obmascik
“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 the strength to rise up.”
— Tyler Knott
“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”
– Robert Green Ingersoll
“I’m always looking for a new challenge. There are a lot of mountains to climb out there. When I run out of mountains, I’ll build a new one.”
– Sylvester Stallone
“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
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
— John Muir
“The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down. To me, life is going up until you are burned by flames. Life is an accomplishment, and each moment has a meaning and you must use it. Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I am finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden, so there is a lot of work.”
— Jeanne Moreau
“Choose the mountain you want to climb: don’t pay attention to what other people say, such as ‘that one’s more beautiful’ or ‘this one’s easier’. You’ll be spending lots of energy and enthusiasm to reach your objective, so you’re the only one responsible and you should be sure of what you’re doing.”
–Paulo Coelho
“You’re off to great places, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.”
— Dr. Seuss
“The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble—to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills.”
— Phillip Connors
“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
– Tennessee Williams
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
— Aldous Huxley
“I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.”
— Daniel J. Rice
“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no “meaning,” they are meaning; the mountains are… I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.”
– Peter Matthiessen
“Mountains teach that not everything in this world can be rationally explained.”
– Aleksander Lwow
“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.”
— Jacob Clifford Moomaw
“Mountains make me believe that nothing can be bigger than nature, not even human ego.”
― Jay Kumar Singh
“It is the mountain that has been calling me, and it’s time to answer.”
― Susan Jagannath
“You move a mountain one stone at a time.”
– Catherine Pulsifer
“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
“Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
— Dag Hammarskjold
“While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.”
– Edmund Hillary
“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”
– Robert M. Pirsig
“Kid, you’ll move mountains.”
― Dr. Seuss
Funny Mountain Quotes
“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in church thinking of the mountains.”
— John Muir
“You need mountains, long staircases don’t make good hikers.”
– Amit Kalantri
“Mountains are all the same – just tops, middles and bottoms, sometimes with sheep on and sometimes without.”
― Enid Blyton
“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”
— Hermann Buhl
“There aren’t four seasons in Rocky Mountains, but three: summer, winter, and mud.”
― C.J. Box
“Mountains terrify me – they just sit about; they are so proud.”
– Sylvia Plath
“What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.”
– Victor Hugo
“In the mountains, you are sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes told to go home.”
— Fred Beckey
“Having been bred amongst mountains I am always unhappy when in a flat country. Whenever the skirts of the horizon come on a level with myself I feel myself quite uneasy and generally have a headache.”
– James Hogg
“Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire, and some peace and quiet.”
— Brooke Hampton
“In the mountains, there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.”
— Rusty Baillie
“You don’t need to climb a mountain to know that it’s high.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley
“I can’t understand why men make all this fuss about Everest — it’s only a mountain.”
– Junko Tabei (the first women to summit Everest and a major bada**!)
“I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.”
— Andrew Garfield
Funny Mountain Captions for Instagram
“Anywhere is ‘within walking distance’.”
“Think outside. No box required.”
“The closer you are to mountains, the further you are from idiots.”
“Fresh air, don’t care.”
“A little more altitude, a little less attitude.”
“Adjust your altitude.”
Inspiring Captions for Mountains
“The best view comes after the hardest climb.”
“Do more things that make you forget to check your phone.”
“Sky above, earth below, and peace within.”
“Oh, darling, let’s be adventurers.”
“Go where you feel the most alive.”
“If you think you’ve peaked, find a new mountain.”
“Mountains are the answer. Who cares what the question is?”
Short Captions for Mountain Views
“When everything feels like an uphill struggle, just think of the view from the top.”
“You can’t climb up a mountain with downhill thoughts.”
“All good things are wild and free.”
“Mountains are the soul’s fuel.”
“There is no mountain you can’t climb.”
“Hike more. Worry less.”
“Coffee, Mountains, Adventure.”
Beautiful Mountain Captions for Instagram
“Stop staring at mountains. Climb them instead. Yes, it’s a harder process but it will lead you to a better view.”
“When life gives you mountains, put on your boots and hike.”
“I am never lost in the mountains; it is where I find myself.”
“Life is like a mountain – climb it with no regrets!”
“Do what makes your soul happy.”
Pin these Beautiful Mountain Captions & Mountain Quotes!
Allison Green is a former teacher who has been travel blogging since 2016. She has a Masters in Teaching and a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Her blog posts merge her background as an educator with her experience traveling to 70+ countries to encourage ethical, meaningful travel. She has been a speaker at the World Travel Writers Conference and her writing, photography, and podcasting work has appeared in National Geographic, CNN Arabic, CBC Canada, and Forbes, amongst others. Now a full-time traveler, she has lived in Prague, Sofia, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area.