Hills Quotes

“moonlight disappears down the hills
mountains vanish into fog
and i vanish into poetry.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck’d up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

“You may pray to God to remove the hills on your way and fill every pothole on your path; but don’t be surprised if God gives you a shovel to do so!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Here, are the stiffening hills, here, the rich cargo
Congealed in the dark arteries,
Old veins
That hold Glamorgan's blood.
The midnight miner in the secret seams,
Limb, life, and bread.

- Rhondda Valley”
― Mervyn Peake, Collected Poems

“How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one’s eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen

“The snow grew deeper as we laboured down the hill. The land was a flat white pall, spread out like rumpled wool.
Into the distance stretched the solid sea, sullen and murky beneath the ice.
The sea will trick a man, seeming frozen and steadfast on the surface, but under the white crust, the black water gulps greedily at the breathing world above.
In time, I knew, despite everything that had happened, the sun would rise and the light would glitter off the ice, like shards of glass.
The world would glow.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“Some hills are each only a few centimeters short of being a mountain.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“¿Quién soy después de este éxodo? Tengo una roca
a mi nombre sobre las llanuras que se asoma al pasado

مَنْ أَنا بَعْدَ هذا ٱلرَّحيلِ ٱلْجَماعِيِّ؟ لي صَخْرَةٌ
تَحْمِلُ ٱسْمِيَ فَوْقَ هِضابٍ تُطلُّ على ما مَضَى”
― Mahmoud Darwish, أحد عشر كوكبا

“One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them at their sources; but this journey to sources is not to be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals, and elementals are not governable. There are awakened also in oneself by the contact elementals that are as unpredictable as wind or snow”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

“It is autumn on tip-toe that silently walks the hills and treads the forested expanses, gracing in each step a billion leaves in a chorus of colors so brilliantly ingenious that a thousand museums or more could not hold the artistry because a thousand artists or more will never possess the talent to produce what autumn effortlessly creates.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“When tomorrow broke, our hillside home filled up with honeyed light, a fish tank.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography.
From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate.
We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy there more.
Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“It has said of walkers … that they are born, not made … Others have claimed that only when you go afoot do you grow in the grace of gentleness and humility; that the shining angles accompany the man who walks, but the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride … while the purely physical aspect of walking may appeal to one person, nature's companionship may be the joy of another. Much will depend upon what we are in ourselves -- our qualities of heart and mind and soul, our natural temperament and training, our relationship to the all-pervading Spirit, and upon the influences which affect us; but that it is a healthy, purifying, and character-revealing exercise most walkers will agree. The very unrest within us that sends us forth upon our walks is an interesting problem. The adventures and experience we meet give a zest to life itself, and often reveal its meaning, and it is with the memories of these we fashion the framework of our temple of the hills”
― Grant, Will

“... haste can do nothing with these hills. I knew when I had looked for a long time that I had hardly begun to see.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

“The structure crouched like a great stone tiger on a slope of the East Bay, resting on the cliffside with calm grace.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Fuck anybody who’d call a hill a mountain and name it after themselves.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Boeing To Gravity by Stewart Stafford

Tumbling down a hill,
An upside-down idyll,
No time to make a will,
If prematurely killed.

And as you tumble down,
Slowly fades your frown,
Falling ankle over crown,
Rolling all the way to town.

Reach the end with a bump,
Sporting that fetching lump,
And to your feet, you jump,
As excited fists both pump.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved”
― Stewart Stafford

“Smoky hills that loomed like ogres.”
― Kevin Ansbro, Kinnara

“It's barely 8:00 a.m., but my train mates waste little time in breaking out the picnic material. But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography.
From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate.
We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy three more.
Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“The sun was touching the hills when I got back to the stables.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“There are people whose wellbeing and survival depends on your wellbeing and longevity. Live a productive and fulfilling life, while you acknowledge those who need you the most. It doesn't matter the number or type of mountains you have to climb. This journey of life is made of hills, mountains and valleys anyway. Keep going! Look ahead to the joy of being at the mountaintop. Choose to celebrate your life and recognize the value in you. Let nothing stop you from greatness. You are created by a Majestic God.”
― Gift Gugu Mona

“Listen Mr. Namaki, you're a king to me
You're a symbol of what we should strive to be
In this modern day and age, you're an alchemist
So let me join you, sing your song up the hills”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“The winding turns around capes, the unclouded sky, the flower mottled hills existed only as an aspect of waiting. Towns, civilization, meant the possibility of stopping for a meal, for the night even. Deep forest preserves through which a dirt road cut, gorgeous vistas that made one in awe of nature, only meant we were not yet near our destination.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“My tea has overbrewed: it is bitter, but still drinkable. I turn on the television and return to the present. Four plump humanoid creatures, red, yellow, green and purple, are frolicking on a grassy hill. Rabbits nibble the grass. The creatures hug each other. A periscope emerges from a knoll and tells them they must say goodbye. After a little protest, they do, jumping one by one into a hole in the ground.”
― Vikram Seth, An Equal Music

“If we bring it down to earth, infinity is a series of rolling hills. A countryside in Ohio where all the tall-grass snakes know how angels lose their wings.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, Betty

“Whenever his eyes happen to graze Mindy's, she senses shame on her behalf: because of her prettiness; because she sleeps with Lou; because she keeps telling herself this trip constitutes anthropological research into group dynamics and ethnographic enclaves, when really what she's after is luxury, adventure, and a break from her four insomniac roommates.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“I've been around and I've noticed that walking’s easy when the road is flat; those big ol’ hills will get you every time.
The good Lord gave us mountains so we could learn how to climb.”
― Lonestar

“The oblong tower of the church, with its wrought-iron steeple, caught the last reflections of the sun against the hills. This is what a cinematographer would call the golden hour, the glowing time just after the sun sinks below the horizon and before the dark sets in. It's the watercolor skies--- discreet layers of cotton-candy pink, dusky rose, and periwinkle, when the fields are their deepest green, and the wheat has a halo that rises from the surface. We were standing on the medieval ramparts, the walls that once protected this small community from the hostilities of the outside world. Just below us was a field of lavender, the rows tidy and symmetrical. Just behind, a hedge of rosemary bushes. In the distance I could make out the summit of Reillanne, golden city on a hill.”
― Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes

“Departing at dawn, the rising sun lit up the hills before them, exposing their prominence and dangers. It was as though the sun was issuing a fair warning that death was an ever-present companion among the rocky crags and cliffs.”
― Santosh Kalwar, The Royal Regiment