Your Mountain is Waiting: Our Favorite Outdoor Lifestyle Quotes

We’ve been squirreling away quotes about camping, biking, mountains and outdoors for some time now.  We thought it would be fun to compile them all into one post.

 

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There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.

- Paul Theroux

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I love to be outdoors. I prefer being outdoors to, you know, being inside.

- Keith Carradine

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The clearest way into the universe

is through a forest wilderness.

- John Muir

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I became a loner. I became a mountain man. A lot of those things are very good qualities and they help you do your work, help you be singular and keep the artistic integrity of your work intact, but they don’t make it very easy to live your life.

- John Milius

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The modern world is fast, complex, competitive, and always concerned with what happens next. There is always more to do than there is time. The landscape and even the light are mostly artificial. This can be exciting, but all too often it is frustrating, stressful, and exhausting. In contrast, hiking for weeks or months at a time in an unspoiled natural environment is a simple, repetitive activity that leads to calmness and psychological well-being, a feeling of wholeness, of being a complete person. Each day follows the same pattern, linking in with natural rhythms–walk in the light, sleep in the dark, eat when hungry, take shelter from storms. Only the details are different. I get a great pleasure from this simplicity, from the basic pattern of walk and camp, walk and camp. It is good to escape the rush of the modern world and for a period of time to live a quieter, more basic life. Problems and worries subside as the days go by; they are put into perspective by the elemental activity of putting one foot in front of the other hour after hour, day after day. And on returning from the wilds, restored and revitalized by the experience, I find civilization can be much easier to deal with; indeed, aspects of it can seem very desirable.

- Chris Townsend

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There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.

- Chinese Proverbs

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A mountain has no need for people, but people do need mountains. We go to them for their beauty, for the exhilaration of standing closer to mysterious skies, for the feeling of triumph that comes from having labored to reach a summit.

- Earl Hamner, Jr.

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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

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I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.

- Linda McCartney

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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

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I do not own an inch of land,

but all I see is mine.

- Lucy Larcom

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There is no bad weather. You are not well equipped!

- Unknown

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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up, as did men of another age, to the challenge of nature. Modern man lives in a highly synthetic kind of existence. He specializes in this and that. Rarely does he test all his powers or find himself whole. But in the hills and on the water the character of a man comes out.

- Abram T. Collier

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A simple equation exists between freedom and numbers: the more people, the less freedom.

- Royal Robbins

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Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.  Everything is simply happy.  Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.  Look at the flowers – for no reason.  It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

- Osho

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Marry a mountain girl and you marry the whole mountain.

- Irish Saying

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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

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I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that… I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature.

- Abraham Cowley

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It is impossible to overestimate the value of wild mountains and mountain temples as places for people to grow in, recreation grounds for soul and body.

- John Muir

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We’ve been swimming at nude beaches and I love to go skinny dipping, but I’m sorry, sitting on top of a mountain, that’s just, you’re trying to show off or something. That’s ridiculous.

- Andy Richter

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You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself.

- James Whittaker

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The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

- Galileo

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It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy.

–Horace Kephart

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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

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I was comin’ down the mountain.

- Jane’s Addiction

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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

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There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.

- Chinese Proverb

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The mountains are calling and I must go.

- John Muir

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A man does not climb a mountain

without bringing some of it away with him,

and leaving something of himself upon it.

- Sir Martin Conway

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Climb up on some hill at sunrise.  Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you’ll find it there.

- Robb Sagendorph

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We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities.

- Nessmuk (G.W. Sears)

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I got into an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent.  That’s a bad place for an argument, because then I tried to walk out and slammed the flap.  How are you supposed to express your anger in this situation?  Zipper it up really quick?

- Mitch Hedberg

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If you don’t let go, you can’t fall off!

- Jerry Moffat

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Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out – it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.

- Robert Service

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Even in these mercifully emancipated decades, many people still seem quite seriously alarmed at the prospect of sleeping away from officially consecrated campsites, with no more equipment than they can carry on their backs. When pressed, they babble about snakes or bears or even, by God, bandits. But the real barrier, I’m sure, is the unknown.

- Colin Fletcher

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The bicycle is its own best argument.

- Richard Ballantine

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Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

- Rachel Carson

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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

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Always in big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone to a new place, there will be, along with feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are understanding the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is the experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes common ground, and a common bond, and we cease to be alone.

- Wendell Berry

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I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

- John Muir

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To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

- John Burroughs

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Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.

- Dr. Seuss