It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.
Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing
Climbing is the lazy man's way to enlightenment. It forces you to pay attention, because if you don't, you won't succeed, which is minor - or you may get hurt, which is major. Instead of years of meditation, you have this activity that forces you to relax and monitor your breathing and tread that line between living and dying. When you climb, you always are confronted with the edge. Hey, if it was just like climbing a ladder, we all would have quit a long time ago.
There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.
When you ride your bike, you're working your legs, but your mind is on a treadmill. When you play chess, your mind is clicking along, but your body is stagnating. Climbing brings it together in a beautiful, magical way. The adrenaline is flowing, and it's flowing all the time.
In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.
If adventure has a final and all-embracing motive, it is surely this: we go out because it is our nature to go out, to climb mountains, and to paddle rivers, to fly to the planets and plunge into the depths of the oceans... When man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money.
I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.
Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.
The mountains are calling and I must go.
To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.
On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.
Life is brought down to the basics: if you are warm, regular, healthy, not thirsty or hungry, then you are not on a mountain... Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall - it's great when you stop.
Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.
Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
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.
I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.
I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.
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