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Alps Quotes

Browse 53 quotes about Alps.

Alps Quotes

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

LoveDeathAmbitionGloryMurderKillingSoldierRussiaFranceParisEgyptItalyPyramidsWidowsOrphansAlpsTombWaterlooNapoleonPeasantNapoleon BonaparteNapoleon The GreatToulon
Book:The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
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“After my parents were dead, I found in a box and in two chests of drawers nothing but hundreds of bright red Alpine caps, I said, nothing but bright red Alpine stockings. Every one of them knitted by my mother. My parents could have gone into the High Alps with these bright red caps and bright red stockings for thousands of years. I burnt every one of those bright red caps and bright red stockings, I said. I put on one of my mother's hundreds of bright red Alpine caps and in this costume burnt all the others, laughing, laughing, continuously laughing, I said. (Goethe Dies, p.65)”

HumourParentsDysfunctional FamiliesAlpsTrips
Book:Goethe schtirbt: Erzählungen
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“Yes, you do hate Switzerland. And," doctor Messerli paused for effect, "you love it. You love it and you hate it. What you don't feel is apathy. You're not indifferent. You're ambivalent." Anna had thought about this before, when nights came during which she could do nothing but wander Dietlikon's sleeping streets or hike the hill behind her house to sit upon the bench where most often she went to weep. She'd considered her ambivalence many, many times, and in the end, she's diagnosed herself with a disease that she'd also invented. Switzerland syndrome. Like Stockholm syndrome. But instead of my captors, I'm attached to the room in which I'm held captive. It's the prison I'm bound to, not the warden. Anna was absolutely right. It was the landscape. it was the geography. The fields, the streams, the lakes, the forests. And the mountains. On exceptionally clear days when the weather was right, if you walked south on Dietlikon's Bahnhofstrasse you could see the crisp outlines of snow-capped Alps against a blazing blue horizon eighty kilometers away. On these certain days it was something in the magic of the atmosphere that made them tangible and moved them close. The mutability of those particular mountains reminded Anna of herself. And it wasn't simply the natural landscape that she attached herself to emotionally. It was the cobblestone roads of Zürich's old town and the spires of this church and the towers of that one. And the trains, the trains, the goddamn trains. She could take the train anywhere she wanted to go.”

MountainsSwitzerlandNatural BeautyAlpsZürichForeign WifeForeigner In SwitzerlandHausfrau
Author:Jill Alexander Essbaum
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“All the best things and treasures of this world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snow-ball, higher and higher, larger and larger, along the Alps of human power.”

WorldHumansWhiteProgressGenerationsThis WorldHigherBallsTreasureSnowBest ThingsRollingGatheringAll The BestHuman PowerAlps
Book:Works:
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“History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights of Ashby never burnish the page of Scott with richer lights of lance and armor than the Carthaginians, winding down the Alps, cast upon Livy.”

LightRomanceMovingFictionMoralHistoryDramaPagesSurpriseCastsStrangerAccidentsFeaturesEpicMajestyKnightsArmorAlpsHectorRobinson CrusoeWinding Down
Book:Pleasures of Literature
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“We should strengthen the faith of our people in their own future, the faith of every Canadian in Canada, and of every province in its sister province. This faith wrongs no one; burdens no one; menaces no one; dishonors no one; and, as it was said of old, faith moves mountains, so I venture reverently to express my own belief that if the difficulties of our future as a dominion were as high as the peaks of the Alps or Andes, yet that the pure patriotic faith of a united people would be all sufficient to overcome and ultimately to triumph over all such difficulties.”

PeopleIfsShouldSaidWould BeMovingBeliefMy OwnUnitedPureMountainOvercomingDifficultyBurdenTriumphSufficientCanadaPatrioticOur FutureVentureDominionProvincesMenaceDishonorMove MountainsAlps
Author:Thomas D'Arcy McGee
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“If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.”

IfsTryingEyeLostCasesWorstTheaterTheatreElephantsPlaywrightCrossingsNineteenAlpsSnowstorms
Book:Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself
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“There is something about the Himalayas not possessed by the Alps, something unseen and unknown, a charm that pervades every hour spent among them, a mystery intriguing and disturbing. Confronted by them, a man loses his grasp of ordinary things, perceiving himself as immortal, an entity capable of outdistancing all changes, all decay, all life, all death.”

MenHoursLosesMysteryCapableOrdinaryCharmImmortalPossessedDecayEntityUnseenDisturbingIntriguingOrdinary ThingsHimalayasAlps
Author:Frank Smythe
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“Even a fellow with a camera has his favourite subjects, as we can see looking through the Kodak-albums of our friends. One amateur prefers the family group, another bathing scenes, another cows upon an alp, or kittens held upside down in the arms of a black-faced child. The tendency to choose one subject rather than another indicates the photographer's temperament. Nevertheless, his passion is for photography rather than for selection, a kitten will serve when no cows are available.”

ChildrenPassionBlackGroupsSubjectsArmsScenePhotographyCamerasFellowsPhotographerAlbumsAvailableTendenciesCowsFavouriteNeverthelessSelectionTemperamentUpside DownKittenBathingAlpsKodak
Author:E. M. Forster
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“If you see cattle as a source of organic manure, animal energy, as well as milk products, then Indian cattle are not inferior. It is only when you measure them as milk machines that they become inferior. What if we measured the dairy cows of America or Jersey or the Swiss Alps in terms of their work functions? They would be terribly inferior.”

IfsWellsWould BeAmericaEnergyTermAnimalProductsSourceMachinesFunctionIndianWhat IfMilkCowsInferiorsJerseyCattleDairySwissManureAlpsDairy Cows
Author:Vandana Shiva
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“n Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

LoveLifeYearsHumorFunnyPoliticsPeaceHistoryDemocracyProduceMurderTerrorClockWarfareRenaissanceThirty YearsBloodshedSwitzerlandLeonardoBrotherlyBrotherly LoveCuckoosVoting And DemocracyBooks And MoviesAlpsItalian RenaissanceCuckoo Clocks
Author:Orson Welles
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“And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.”

MenYearsI CanBookPlayEyeLastsNextHouseVisionKindnessTakenSawsSkyBrokenPromiseLipsSilverTallThievesCigaretteLast TimeAccordionsAlpsLieselLiesel Meminger
Author:Markus Zusak
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“A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.”

IfsMenGivingFeelsLongSelfEnoughAbleTogetherBitsChanceCompanyInfluenceHard WorkFairsImportanceReasonableZeroSublimeConceitSelf-importanceGlaciersAlps
Book:A Tramp Abroad
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“New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try.”

TryingFirstsScienceSceneAccountsEndlessAlps
Book:The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., with Notes and Illustrations, by Himself and Others. To which are Added, a New Life of the Author, an Estimate of His Poetical Character and Writings, and Occasional Remarks by William Roscoe, Esq
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“Running gives me a clearer perspective on the world, and it makes me feel special. I've never been a traditional tourist. I've always seen the world by running, and that has allowed me to view things in a different way. Places look different in the early-morning hours, when the streets are deserted.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWayInspirationalGivingLooksDifferentRunningRememberHoursViewsMorningSunStreetsMissingPerspectiveHusbandGive MeGoldenMy WayBridgesDifferent WaysGatesMy HusbandDiamondHawaiiSan FranciscoDeerFishermanEarly MorningDesertedSwitzerlandBoilingCrabsSun RiseAlpsGrazingGolden Gate Bridge
Author:Grete Waitz
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“I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?”

PeopleIfsKnowsWritingMindBelieveChildrenStillsPlayWishSoundLandAccountsLifetimeRationalDryOccupationRidingExtensionsAssuredBicycleDescribingMake BelieveRiding A BicycleAlpsDry Land
Book:Paris Stories
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“We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.”

MenWorldWarSoundRoomsMillionsBattleThousandTenOceanSummerArmySilentSevenCalmAncientOpeningWar Of The WorldsLawnsAiryWorld War OneAlps
Book:Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait
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