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A valley is a low area of land between hills or mountains …

• Valley: A low area of land between hills or mountains, typically with a river or stream flowing through it.
• Even God cannot make two mountains without a valley in between. Gaelic Proverb
• Mountains,  Lakes,  Rivers,  Nature

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… typically, with a river running through it

• Many a time have I merely closed my eyes at the end of yet another troublesome day and soaked my bruised psyche in wild water, rivers remembered, and rivers imagined. Rivers course through my dreams, rivers cold and fast, rivers well- known and rivers nameless, rivers that seem like ribbons of blue water twisting through wide valleys, narrow rivers folded in layers of darkening shadows, rivers that have eroded down deep into a mountain’s belly, sculpted the land. Peeled back the planet’s history exposing the texture of time itself. Harry Middleton
• Any river is really the summation of the whole valley. To think of it as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part. Hal Borland
• Rivers

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Valleys are one of the great designs by nature …

• As architect Nature builds pillars of clouds, rugged mountain ranges, deep canyons, quiet valleys and towering skyscraper trees.
• Nature

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… and often a place of profound beauty

• Every day advanced the passing of the leaf, and soon our painters had to go in quest of the desirable ‘spot of red.’ The hills that had been crimson and scarlet with maple were changed to purplish grey. The yellow leaves were following fast. They realized one night of breaking cloud that there was a growing moon, and they looked at old star friends from the car door – the Dipper lying flat among the spruce tops, and one rare night bright Capella dimmed in a jet of Aurora. After such a night the trees could resist no longer, and they saw many a one cast off all her leaves in one desperate shower. Birch woods, that were dense yellow in the morning were open grey by night. But the wild cherry leaves still hung as though the high fifes and violins were to finish the great concert of colour. They were another of the notable little graces of the bush, daintily hung in every shade from palest yellow to deep crimson against the big blue- gold hills of the Montreal Valley. J. E. H. MacDonald
• It was October again… a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain — amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
• Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn—a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, Frost… John Greenleaf Whittier
• Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. Ansel Adams
• Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it. Douglas Hyde
• Beauty

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A walk through a valley can refresh the spirit and mind

• A walk amongst nature, whether by the sea, river, hill, valley, meadow or wood, works wonders for the human spirit.
• Contemplate the workings of this world. Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Everything–even mountains, rivers, plants and trees–should be your teacher.  Morihei Ueshiba
• May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland. Virgil
• Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants and trees – should be your teacher. Morihei Ueshiba
• To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can’t imagine what that’s like. Nicole Krauss
• Rest and renewal

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Valleys are a popular metaphor for adversity and challenge …

• 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
• Metaphors to live by

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… a place of dark shadows

• When walking through the ‘valley of shadows,’ remember, a shadow is cast by a Light. Austin O’Malley
• One of the greatest gifts we can give people is the hope that their death is nothing to fear – you know, not that it has no fear in it, but the promise of scripture is that God will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. Max Lucado
• Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Bible

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Life is both valley and mountain

• Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine, and valleys of frustration and failure. Calvin & Hobbes
• Life is sunshine and storm

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The challenge is to not get stuck in the 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
• When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.  Charles R. Swindoll

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… and not to make the valley deeper than it needs to be

• Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon. Andy Van Slyke

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The valley can be a place for great learning and growth …

• But where we cannot understand we may trust. As I wandered in the wilderness of “ups and downs,” as I descended from Transfiguration Mounts to deep Valleys of Shadows, and then asceded again, and yet was never quite lost, I learned more and more how to trust; until in time I came to know that ‘all things work together for good’ to those who work with them. Elizabeth Towne
• Learning,  Growth

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… for valleys tend to be more fertile than mountain tops

• How green was my valley. Richard Llewellyn

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The view from the valley can add great perspective …

• One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.  G. K. Chesterton
• All I can say is that you only realize how big your mountain is once you’re laying motionless, helpless, and hopeless in the valley below. No one goes there on purpose, if you get what I’m saying, because the only way to find your personal low is to slip and roll down that mountain of yours, straight through to the bottom, no holds barred. Artie Lange
• Perspective

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… and adds height and significance to the peaks

• 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

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The valleys add challenge and depth to life

• The marvellous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse. Helen Keller

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Don’t get stuck in the valley but press on for the mountain peaks

• If it’s IN you to climb you must — there are those who MUST lift their eyes to the hills — they can’t breathe properly in the valleys. L.M. Montgomery
• Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. Theodore Roethk
• When you are in the valley, keep your goal firmly in view and you will get the renewed energy to continue the climb. Denis Waitley

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When you’ve reached the peak, look across the valley for another to climb …

• 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
• Life is a climb

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… for we are not meant to live permanently on mountain tops

• We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time. Oswald Chambers
• 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

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Relationships have valleys and peaks too

• Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long- term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys. Nicholas Sparks

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Be like a river cutting your way through a valley

• Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for they own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own? Aidan Chambers
• I want my life to be a mountain stream that rushes down wild flowered slopes through pine glades into green valleys, I do not want culverts to contain my force or cement to channel my flow, nothing to break my life’s course with roots, stones and sand. Lowell McMullin
• Rivers

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More valley metaphors

• 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
• Man is not himself only…He is all that he sees; all that flows to him from a thousand sources…He is the land, the lift of its mountain lines, the reach of its valleys. Mary Austin
• To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity. Adam Smith
• Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy
• I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• From of old the things that have acquired unity are these: Heaven by unity has become clear; Earth by unity has become steady; The Spirit by unity has become spiritual; The Valley by unity has become full; All things by unity have come into existence. Lao Tzu
• Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. Danish Proverb

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• Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. Joel Rosenberg
• Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon.  Andy Van Slyke
• Where I come from the valleys are so narrow the dogs have to wag their tails up and down.  Sam Snead

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