High Country Quotes

People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I never thought that I could reach such a high political position. But I have always been ready to serve my country. ~ Atifete Jahjaga

The Sierra Nevada is five hundred miles of rock put right. Granite freed by glaciers and lifted through clouds where water, frozen and fine, has scraped and washed it into a high country so brilliant it brings light into night. ~ Willard Wyman

I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind.

If all of human knowledge, everything that's known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all.

Few people travel here. There's no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile.

In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one's way out. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty ... ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Our aims are absolutely clear: They are a high living standard in the country and a secure, free and comfortable life. ~ Vladimir Putin

I wish I had met you first."

Seven words. Expressing sentiment so innocent yet so weighted with meaning it threw her thoughts into disarray. ~ Kaki Warner Bride Of The High Country

I think protest and actions have to be organised against the Israelis and their backers. There needs to be a concerted high profile campaign to raise awareness of the people in this country. ~ Tom Paulin

Good afternoon, Mrs. Blackstone. Who the hell is this and what does he think he's doing carting you around like a sack of potatoes?"
"This is Mark," Letty said. "He's going to be the model for our new ad campaign. You know, the one aimed at the experienced high-country
backpacker and rock climber."
"I trust he's not going to try to pack you into the high country?"
"Heavens, no. He was just proving to me that he could lift a hundred and twenty pounds of camping and climbing gear, weren't you, Mark? ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

Darwin found out that when you took horses up to the high country in the Middle East, they would then grow long hair after a season or two. But when you took them - these long-haired horses - back into the low, hot country, they wouldn't get rid of the long hair, just in case, for about four generations. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Walter Isaacson, who ate dinner with the Jobs family while researching his biography of Steve Jobs, told Bilton that, "No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices." It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply. ~ Adam Alter

They say somebody's 'street smart.' I feel like, if I got intelligence, it's just a country smart. ~ Dolly Parton

Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance. ~ David Allen

There is a gentleness, a lightness, an element of freedom and, in a word, of civilization, that makes this country one of the few countries in the world where, despite everything, you can still breathe freely. ~ Bernard-Henri Levy

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love ... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

I like Paul [Ryan]. But these are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership. We need very, very strong leadership. And I'm just not quite there. I'm not quite there yet. ~ Donald Trump

And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity. ~ Elon Musk

As soon as I graduated from high school I was off to the biggest college my parents could afford, Colorado University at Boulder, having seen students there who looked a lot like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. ~ Susan Schneider

My parents' biggest thing was that they just wanted me to graduate high school and go to college. They couldn't fathom me acting for the rest of my life. ~ Mila Kunis

I was probably more scared of my high school exams than I was of the Oscars. At the time you think it's everything and if you don't do well, your life's over. Opportunities are gone. So the more you do it, the less the fear is present. ~ Hugh Jackman

What happened?"
"Oil." The sheikh shook his head. "The great cursed wealth from beneath the ground that the Prophet foresaw would destroy us. And statehood-what a terrible idea that was, eh? This part of the world was never meant to function that way. Too many languages, too many tribes, too motivated by ideas those high-heeled cartographers from Paris couldn't understand. Don't understand. Will never understand. Well, God save them-they're not the ones who have to live in this mess. They said a modern state needs a single leader, a secular leader, and the emir was the closest thing we had. So to the emir went all the power. And anyone who thinks that isn't a good idea is hounded down and tossed in jail, as you have so recently discovered. All so that some pantywaist royal nephew can have a seat at the UN and carry a flag in the Olympics and be thoroughly ignored. ~ G. Willow Wilson

I was playing golf in Palm Springs and after a round I asked the waitress in a restaurant to bring me a glass of iced tea and lemonade. A lady sitting nearby heard me and asked the waitress to bring her a "Palmer," too. The name caught on and the beverage quickly spread around the country. ~ Arnold Palmer

The ice tinkles prettily: There's no more inviting sound to her, it's sophistication, like a British accent or that call-and-response of high-heeled shoes on tile. ~ Rumaan Alam

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
(Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference (28 September 1838)) ~ William Lloyd Garrison

Housing projects are a great metaphor for the government's relationship to poor folks: these huge islands built mostly in the middle of nowhere, designed to warehouse lives. People are still people, though, so we turned the projects into real communities, poor or not. We played in fire hydrants and had cookouts and partied, music bouncing off concrete walls. But even when we could shake off the full weight of those imposing buildings and try to just live, the truth of our lives and struggle was still invisible to the larger country. The rest of the country was freed of any obligation to claim us. Which was fine, because we weren't really claiming them, either. ~ Jay-Z

I don't like all of the contemporary country. I like some of it, but I'm mostly into the traditional style. ~ Kim Dickens

Those market researchers ... are playing games with you and me and with this entire country. Their so-called samples of opinion are no more accurate or reliable than my grandmother's big toe was when it came to predicting the weather. ~ Dan Rather

In my senior year of high school, I was working at a dealership washing cars. For some reason, I asked them to give me a shot as a salesman for a shift. What happened was I sold two cars in one day and they offered me the position. After a while I decided I didn't want the job and so I told the manager I'd contracted HIV from having unprotected sex. It was only half true but I'd been feeling sick and somehow convinced myself I was really dying. I remember I sat in my boss' office, the both of us crying. Later than night he calls my dad and says 'I'm sorry your son has HIV.' It was terrible. ~ Nick Thune

I think I went through my phase of feeling sort of invisible when I left my small hometown in Canada and moved to the big city of Vancouver. I kind of had to decide right there in that moment what I was going to do with the rest of my life and make a thousand decisions after finishing high school. Fortunately, I chose acting. ~ Justin Chatwin

I love Spain. It's my favorite country that I've been to and I've traveled quite a bit. I've been really fortunate as an adult to have been to a lot of interesting places like Egypt and China. ~ Bitsie Tulloch

All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history. ~ Bill Bryson

I've always felt very proud of Wales and being Welsh. People are a bit surprised when I say I'm Welsh. I was born in Wales, went to school in Wales and my mother was Welsh. I'm Welsh. It's my place of birth, my country. ~ John Prescott

Immortality affords you the opportunity to witness history in the making. Humanity's triumphs and its cruelties, both. It is both a high price to pay and a priceless gift, to carry the weight of that knowledge. ~ Chloe Neill

God is at home. We are in the far country. ~ Meister Eckhart

High and mighty guzzlers, and you, O all you precious pox-ridden - while you have the leisure and I have nothing else more important to do, let me ask you a question: why does everybody say, as if it were proverbially true, that the world is no longer flat? Understand, please, that "flat" here means "without zest, unsalted, insipid, washed-out": taking it metaphorically, it signifies "crazy, foolish, senseless, rot-brained." Would you argue, as indeed one might logically infer, that if we say that the world has been flat, now we have to say that it's become wise? What was it that made it flat? Why was it flat? Why should it be wise? What do you think ancient stupidity was? What do you think constitutes our present wisdom? What made it flat? What has made it wise? Are there more lovers of flatness or more lovers of wisdom? Just exactly when was it flat? Just exactly when was it wise? Who's responsible for that earlier flatness? Who's responsible for that later wisdom? Why did that ancient flatness end right now, and not at some other time? Why did our present wisdom begin right now, and not sooner? What harm did our earlier flatness do us? What good is this new wisdom? How did we get rid of our ancient flatness? How was our present wisdom brought about? ~ Francois Rabelais

All ancient polytheisms revered one high god above all others. ~ Lesley Hazleton

The canyons of our minds and hearts are so deep and so full of mystery that we try at all costs to avoid entering them deeply. We avoid journeying inward because we are too frightened: frightened because we must make that journey alone; frightened because we know it will involve solitude and perseverance; and frightened because we are entering the unknown. Aloneness, suffering, perseverance, the unknown: All these frighten us. Our own depths frighten us! And so we stall, distract ourselves, drug the pain, party and travel, stay busy, try this and that, cling to people and moments, junk up the surface of our lives, and find any and every excuse to avoid being alone and having to face ourselves. We are too frightened to travel inward. But we pay a price for that, a high one: superficiality and shallowness. So long as we avoid the painful journey inward, to the depth of our caverns, we live at the surface. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

I flunked three grades before I got out of high school. ~ Stephen J. Cannell

Iran's President openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. The Iranian nuclear program is a threat, not just to my country, but to the entire region. And it's incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to keep from proliferating. ~ Mark Regev

My country can never be taken away from me now; I'd happily given it away. ~ Kiera Cass

Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?
~ Germaine Greer

The air was warm and heavy as sprinkles began to fall from the clouds high above. The Triton glided through the waters and the whoosh of the ship combined with the steady beat of the rain to make a concerto, like a pianist fluttering his fingers on the keys at one end and running his fingers up and down the scales at the other. Expectancy hung in the air as the tune moved to a crescendo. ~ Victoria Kahler

Terrorist threats are not happening just in this country, but in every European country and every country across the globe. As a result of that, we do sometimes have to take measures we would rather not take in order to give us the security we need. ~ Tony Blair

On what rests the hope of the republic? One country, one language, one flag! ~ Alexander Henry

The language itself, whether you speak it or not, whether you love it or hate it, is like some bewitchment or seduction from the past, drifting across the country down the centuries, subtly affecting the nations sensibilities even when its meaning is forgotten. ~ Jan Morris

Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War. ~ Richard Norton Smith

There was no person, whether they thought I was too fat, too black, too country, too ghetto, too New York, too thug or too whatever! Nobody ultimately had the say over whether or not I was going to make it. ~ Kelly Price

The long historian of my country's woes. ~ Homer

Smoke hung heavy in the air. Will's eyes stung. His throat.
His nose. And the crackling. God, the crackling fire was like the devil laughing.
Vera was in that house.
Mikey gripped his arm. "Hold on, Will - "
Will lunged forward. "Vera - "
"Whoa, Will." Mikey's grip tightened. "Stop."
"The hell I will. Vera - "
"Billy?" One of the cops approached him. Said a bunch of
words. Helped Mikey hold Will back.
Vera was in that house.
Vera, her trusty wooden body, her frets, her new strings. Vera,
who'd had his back everywhere from Pickleberry Springs to
Nashville to New York to LA, from seedy bars to stadiums.
Vera, who'd helped him write his first song. His last song.
Every song in between. ~ Jamie Farrell

a woman who contributes to the life of mankind by the occupation of motherhood is taking as high a place in the division of human labor as anyone else could take. If she is interested in the lives of her children and is paving the way for them to become fellow men, if she is spreading their interests and training them to cooperate, her work is so valuable that it can never be rightly rewarded. In our own culture the work of a mother is undervalued and often regarded as a not very attractive or estimable occupation. It is paid only indirectly and a woman who makes it her main occupation is generally placed in a position of economic dependence. The success of the family, however, rests equally upon the work of the mother and the work of the father. Whether the mother keeps house or works independently, her work as a mother does not play a lower role than the work of her husband. ~ Alfred Adler

Canada is a good country to be from. It has a gentler slower pace - it lends perspective. ~ Paul Anka

I went into broadcast journalism. I loved every class I took, I just got anxious because I came to the realization that you're groomed in high school to get good SAT scores to get into a good college or else you're done for. ~ Chace Crawford

Country has been a wonderful outlet for me. ~ Suzy Bogguss

Pope John Paul II himself was kind of a rather independent, creative man. I remember being told by somebody who worked very close with him in preparation for his first visit to the United States in 1979, he studied our normative documents, Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution. And he was amazed. He called his priests first
thing in the morning and he said, he said, I thought America was a pagan country. ~ Chris Matthews

I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back. ~ J. D. Souther

And should I die in her care, I would leave smiling because, I will linger in the hills beside her ... ~ Kellie Elmore

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") ~ Charles Beaumont

I was taken out of school by my dad when I was 11 and lived in Mexico City, then later in Paris. I went with him to excavate in Bolivia and Peru. I never finished high school. I was a straight F student anyway. My father admitted to me later that he'd thought I would come to no good. ~ Michael Heizer