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We love to conquer mountains by climbing them … 

• …as I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition that I was. Warren Harding
• I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.  Sir Leslie Stephen
• Mountain hikes instilled in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit or peak.  Paul D. Boyer
• Hiking,  Life is a climb,  Nature,  Valleys,  Rivers

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… only to discover it is not the mountain but ourselves that we have conquered 

• You never conquer a mountain. Mountains can’t be conquered; you conquer yourself–your hopes, your fears.  Jim Whitaker
• It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.  Edmund Hillary

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It is in our nature to climb mountains … 

• 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
• Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.  Greg Child
• In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb… and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.  Rob Parker
• 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

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… and it is a wonderful, challenging pursuit 

• Climbing is as close as we can come to flying.   Margaret Young
• Remember that time spent on a rock climb isn’t subtracted from your life span.  Will Niccolls
• 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
• Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, only the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate. Gaston Rebuffat
• It’s a wonderful feeling to push even a tiny piece of the planet down beneath one’s feet. If it’s overhanging plastic, it’s going to pump your arms like bloated sausages; if it’s a steep snow-slope at 27000 feet it’s going to deaden the legs and make the lungs like overworked bellows. Either way, the challenges are obvious.  Adrian Burgess
• Challenge

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More thoughts on climbing mountains 

• Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.  Ed Viesturs
• In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.  Rusty Baille
• Climbing is one of the few sports in which the arena (the cliffs, the mountains and their specific routes) acquire a notoriety that out populates, outshines and outlives the actual athletes.  Jonathan Waterman
• In mountaineering, if we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the main point, and those who only wander in high places become part of the story.” – Rebecca Solnit 
• The aim of the mountaineer, if he wishes to be an artist in the full sense of word, is neither escape nor “the search for the absolute” as some have claimed, but rather seek that place where “the mystic remains silent and the poets start to speak towards men.” – Bernard Amy
• It’s always further than it looks. It’s always taller than it looks. And it’s always harder than it looks.  The 3 rules of mountaineering.
• Most look up and admire the stars. A champion climbs a mountain and grabs one.
• When preparing to climb a mountain – pack a light heart.  Dan May
• Climbing is not a spectator sport.  Mark Wellman
• When you ride your bike, you’re working your legs, but your mind is on a treadmill. When you play chess, your mind is clicking along, but your body is stagnating. Climbing brings it together in a beautiful, magical way. The adrenaline is flowing, and it’s flowing all the time.  Pat Ament
• …by bringing myself over the edge and back, I discovered a passion to live my days fully, a conviction that will sustain me like sweet water on the periodically barren plain of our short lives.  Jonathan Waterman
• Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.  Sir Martin Convay
• Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion. Anatoli Boukreev
• You don’t need to climb a mountain to know that it’s high.  Paulo Coelho
• 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. I produce nothing but words; I consumer nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.  Philip Connors

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Mountains inspire awe and wonder in us 

• Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul.  They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth.  They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.  Elizabeth Aston
• Men travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.  Saint Augustine
• Awe,  Wonder

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Mountains have a strong call 

• The mountains are calling and I must go.  John Muir

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Being in the mountains makes us feel fully alive 

• The bizarre trend in mountaineers is not the risk they take, but the large degree to which they value life. They are not crazy because they don’t dare, they’re crazy because they do. These people tend to enjoy life to the fullest, laugh the hardest, travel the most, and work the least.  Lisa Morgan
• Vitality,  Being fully alive

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Being in the mountains gives us great perspective on life 

• I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.  John Muir
• Doubly happy, however, is the man whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below.  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
• Perspective

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Being in the mountains soothes us and restores the soul 

• 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 off like autumn leaves.  John Muir
• Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.  John Muir
• My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. Aldous Huxley
• Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field.  Paulo Coelho
• 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
• Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…  John Muir 
• Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.  George Wherry
• The soul,  Rest and renewal

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Being in the mountains is freedom 

• On this proud and beautiful mountain, we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.  Lionel Terray
• Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature’s darlings.  John Muir
• Freedom

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Let mountains teach you about life 

• Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it’s silence, it’s beauty, it’s humility. Stay aligned to that. Stuart Wilde
• Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands –  a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world. Sidney Lovett

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Let mountains teach you the power of stability and equanimity 

• Just as a rocky mountain is not moved by storms, so sights, sounds, tastes, smells, contacts and ideas, whether desirable or undesirable, will never stir one of steady nature, whose mind is firm and free. Anguttara Nikaya
• The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Orison Swett Marden
• Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to batter it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar. Sogyal Rinpoche
• He who lives with his senses well controlled, moderate in his food and drink, he will not be overthrown, any more than the wind throws down a rocky mountain.  Buddha
• Equanimity

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Let mountains teach you stillness 

• We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. Li Po
• In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height; In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth. Sir Rabindranath Tagore
• Stillness

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Let mountains teach you humility 

• Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence. Nemann Buhl
• Humility

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Mountains and the climbing of them makes great metaphors for life 

• Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.  Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them. Russell H. Conwell
• The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.  Chinese Proverbs
• Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.  Thomas W. Higginson
• I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.  Og Mandino
• Sometimes, you have to fall from the mountain to realize what you are climbing for. Mhargs Abuda
• The higher you climb on the mountain, the harder the wind blows.  Sam Cummings
• 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
• There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains.  Richard Nelson
• The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.  Horace
• May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.  Harley King

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Life itself is like climbing a mountain 

• For life–which is in any way worthy, is like ascending a mountain. When you have climbed to the first shoulder of the hill, you find another rise above you, and yet another peak, and the height to be achieved seems infinity: but you find as you ascend that the air becomes purer and more bracing, that the clouds gather more frequently below than above, that the sun is warmer than before and that you not only get a clearer view of Heaven, but that you gain a wider view of earth, and that your horizon is perpetually growing larger.  Endicott Peabody
• Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. Climb slowly, steadily, enjoying each passing moment; and the view from the summit will serve as a fitting climax for the journey.  Harold V Melchert
• Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.  Dr. Seuss
• Short is the little time which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain. Marcus Aurelius
• Our way is not soft grass, it’s a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upwards, forward, toward the sun. Ruth Westheimer
• 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
• Life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.  Jeanne Moreau
• Life is a climb

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The climb may be steep but the view makes it worthwhile 

• Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.   Denis Waitley
• Life is like a mountain, hard to climb, but once you get to the top the view is beautiful.
• Doubly happy, however, is the man whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below.  John Muir
• If you don’t scale the mountain, you can’t view the plain.  Chinese Proverbs
• There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.  Chinese Proverbs
• The way up to the top is usually longer and harder than it looks…
• Be prepared to climb one kilometer more: 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. But since you were prepared to go beyond, this is not really a problem.  Paulo Coelh
• It’s always further than it looks. It’s always taller than it looks. And it’s always harder than it looks.  The 3 rules of mountaineering.

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The real growth and happiness is in the climb, not reaching the top  

• Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak. Tal Ben- Shahar
• I’ve learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it. Andy Rooney
• Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak. Tal Ben-Shahar
• To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow. But of course, without the top you can’t have any sides. It’s the top that defines the sides.  Robert M. Pirsig
• Give me the comma of imperfect striving, thus to find zest in the immediate living. Ever the reaching but never the gaining, ever the climbing but never the attaining of the mountain top.   Winston Graham
• Happiness

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Don’t be intimidated by the mountain but inspired and challenged by it 

• The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain–he is inspired by it. The persistent winner is not discouraged by a problem–he is challenged by it. Mountains are created to be conquered; adversities are designed to be defeated; problems are sent to be solved. It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills.  William Arthur Ward
• Challenge is the core and the mainspring of all human activity. If there’s an ocean, we cross it; if there’s a disease, we cure it; if there’s a wrong, we right it; if there’s a record, we break it; and finally, if there’s a mountain, we climb it.  James Ramesy Ullman
• The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain — he is inspired by it.  William Artur Ward

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Follow your own path up the mountain… 

• To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.  Karen Horney
• 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.  Wheeler Wilcox
• Follow your own path

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… focusing just on one step at a time 

• Get started today by looking three feet in front of you, not three miles. A long gaze at the mountain crest will overwhelm you, so stop looking at it. The key to achieving enormous tasks is to break them down into their smallest parts. MJ DeMarco
• When climbing a mountain, define each step in the right direction as success. We learn the alphabet before we write words; it works the same in sport and life. Many small successes add up. Dan Millman
• Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.
• One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.  Barbara Walters
• Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.  Barry Finlay
• The power of small steps

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There are no short cuts to the top 

• Champions know there are no shortcuts to the top. They climb the mountain one step at a time. They have no use for helicopters!  Judi Adier
• The man on top of the mountain did not fall there.

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Pace yourself on your climb 

• Excessive effort can also result from impatience or exaltation, two states that lead nowhere. If you begin climbing a high mountain at a run, your lungs will soon force you to stop. In the same way, if you draw a bow too far, it will break, or if you try to cook on too high a flame, you will end up burning your food.  Matthieu Ricard
• Let your desire fuel you on your way
• We are desire. It is the essence of the human Soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. John Elderidge

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Believe you can do it  

• If you persuade yourself that you can do a certain thing, provided this thing be possible, you will do it, however difficult it may be.  If, on the contrary, you imagine that you cannot do the simplest thing in the world, it is impossible for you to do it, and molehills become for you unscalable mountains.  Emile Coue
• Know the top is reachable if you just keep climbing
• Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.  Barry Finlay
• When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God’s help.   Robert Half
• Self-belief

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Reaching the top requires passing through dark valleys … 

• There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.  Nelson Mandela
• Even God cannot make two mountains without a valley in between. Gaelic Proverb
• Valleys

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… but the valleys serve to add meaning and significance to the peaks when you get there 

• One ceases to recognize the significance of mountain peaks if they are not viewed occasionally from the deepest valleys. Dr. Al Lorin
• Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.  Richard Nixon
• As the valley gives height to the mountain, so can sorrow give meaning to pleasure; as the well is the source of the fountain, deep adversity can be a treasure.  William Arthur Ward
• Meaning

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Turn your dream of reaching the top into a map that shows the way 

• Then there’s a dream that’s more than a dream.  It’s like… a map. A map that you live by and follow for the rest of your days knowing that someday you’re going to stand on top of that mountain holding everything you thought of right there in your hand! Robert Cooper
• Dreams

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The higher you climb, the greater the perspective you’ll get 

• You can look at the world from a mountain or from a rat hole! Most people do the second!  Mehmet Murat Ildan
• No one lives on the top of the mountain. It’s fine to go there occasionally —for inspiration, for new perspectives. But you have to come down. Life is lived in the valleys. That’s where the farms and gardens and orchards are, and where the plowing and the work is done. That’s where you apply the visions you may have glimpsed from the peaks.  Arthur Gordon
• Climb mountains to see lowlands.  Chinese Proverb 
• Perspective

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Life is a mountain of solvable problems … 

• Life is a mountain of solvable problems, and I enjoy that. James Dyson
• Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.  Theodore Roethke
• Problem solving

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… but often, in our minds, we make that mountain far bigger than it needs to be 

• Stress is the state of mind that uses daily tasks to create a mountain impossible to conquer. Margret S.
• The greatest cause of ulcers is mountain-climbing over molehills. Maxwell Maltz
• Is it something that will matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks? Life becomes so less stressful when you stop making mountain out of molehills.  Henrik Edberg
• Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.  Proverb

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Faith diminishes mountains while doubt creates them 

• Faith and initiative rightly combined remove mountainous barriers and achieve the unheard and miraculous. An enthusiastic attitude is nothing more than faith in action.  Henry Chester
• Patience and Diligence, like faith, remove mountains. William Penn
• Faith will move mountains.  Proverb
• If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove.  Bible
• Doubt makes the mountain which faith can move.  Proverb
• Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.  Mason Cooley
• Faith

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The spiritual way is also like a mountain climb … 

• For those who wish to climb the mountain of spiritual awareness, the path is selfless work. For those who have attained the summit of union with the Lord, the path is stillness and peace. Bhagavad Gita
• In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb… and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.  Rob Parker
• The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. Robert M. Pirsig
• One does not climb to attain enlightenment, rather one climbs because he is enlightened.  Zen Master Futomaki

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… a climb that is never in vain 

• On the mountains of truth, you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.  Friedrich Nietzsche

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Climb above the cares of the world 

• He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Never worry about climbing the same mountain twice
• There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains.  Richard Nelson 
• 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

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Sometimes you need to get some distance from the mountain to see it clearly 

• A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe- inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?   Kahlil Gibran
• You cannot see the mountain near.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 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

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• Trying to fall out of love is like trying to climb a mountain. Blindfolded, on crutches, naked in a hail storm.  Louise Caiola
• Volcano: A mountain with hiccups
• A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a small mountain: everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody. Matsch’s Maxim
• A gossip columnist is someone who uses dirt to make a mountain out of a molehill. Alfred E. Neuman
• Faith can move mountains but not furniture.   Proverb
• I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street. W. H. Auden
• It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. Robert W. Service
• Switzerland was frustrating. The mountains kept getting in the way of the scenery

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