Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains — mountain-dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.

Men may move mountains, but ideas move men.

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.

In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.

Men do not stumble over mountains, but over molehills

How come there are so many mountains named after small men? Who were these guys? Why did they get these mountains named after them? You go out there and these little puny men have mountains named after them, and some of these men were really, really bad guys.

Moreover a Mountain signifies a city & more especially the head City as Ierusalem or Babylon, & sometimes a 8 Temple & so x Islands signify Temples in a Country represented by the sea. Dens & Rocks of Mountains the buildings of Cities or the ruins of them, & chiefly of great stone buildings such as are Forts, Pallaces & Temples. Trees & Herbs men Swarms of Insects (as of Locusts) numerous Armies. Wild Beasts forreign Kingdoms. Other Beasts, as Froggs, other societies or sects of men according to their qualities. Wildernes a country wasted by these Beasts whither it be in temporal or spirituall matters. Flesh riches upon which they prey. The Foules of the Air the things that are in it, as spirits, or infectious diseases, & sometimes Armies & kingdoms.

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.

People did not always love the mountains. Just a few hundred years ago the high mountains were regarded as horrible, monstrous places filling people with terror and fear. The inhabitants near them were seen as awful demons, subhumans. But this attitude got transformed into just the opposite, especially by Romantic writers and painters in the nineteenth century. Seen by the Romantics, high mountains became places of impossible beauty, where the quality of light and the expansive solitary grandeur of the high peaks opened the heart of the individual. A man climbing a mountain became the image of self-conscious intelligence pitted against the eternal indifference of the forces of nature. Compared to these forces of nature, we are nothing save for the will that moves our limbs. Only that will is truly our own.

Was there some deeper, level some plane upon which the consciousness of mountains responded to death and waste and pain? Was there a compassion embedded in the very rocks, so that they offered their beauty in compensation for human loss?

A hard, insensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft.