Mountaineering Quotes - Page 4

• One thing to remember on the Eiger, never look up, or you may need a plastic surgeon.

  Don Whillans

  Climbing, Needs, Looks

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• You guys going up? Yes, yes, we go up. You may be going a lot higher than you think!

  Don Whillans

  Thinking, Climbing, Guy

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• I may not be able to pull on the smallest of holds, but those I can pull on I can pull on all day long.

  Jimmy Jewel

  Funny, Climbing, Long

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• There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing

  Ranulph Fiennes

  Running, Adventure, Weather

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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 W. Service

  Inspirational, Success, Climbing

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• 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.

  Leslie Stephen

  Believe, Men, Mountain Peaks

  Leslie Stephen (2013). “The Playground of Europe”, p.220, Cambridge University Press

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• So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. 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. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Struggle, Mean, Adventure

  42 Copy quote

• Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.

  Edward Whymper

  Thinking, Climbing, Hiking

  1871 Scrambles Amongst the Alps.

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• For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread.

  Maurice Herzog

  Climbing, Life And Death, Mountain

  Maurice Herzog (2011). “Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8,000-Meter Peak”, p.400, Open Road Media

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• Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

  Edward Abbey

  Adventure, Climbing, Half

  "Saving Nature's Legacy : Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity" by Reed F. Noss, Allen Y. Cooperrider, and Rodger Schlickeisen, (p. 338), 1994.

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• We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe for
  deeper meanings.

  Allen Steck

  Climbing, Essentials, Useless

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• Mountaineering is a complex and unique way of life, interweaving elements of sport, art and mysticism. Success or failure depends on the ebb and flow of immense inspiration. Detecting a single rule governing this energy is difficult - it arises and vanishes like the urge to dance and remains as mysterious as the phenomenon of life itself.

  Wojciech Kurtyka

  Sports, Art, Inspiration

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• 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.

  Al Alvarez

  Mistake, Climbing, Routine Life

  "Our enduring desire to court deadly risk" by Peter Beaumont, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2012.

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• The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

  Tennessee Williams

  Time, Nature, Flower

  Tennessee Williams (2008). “Camino Real”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

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• Many climbers become writers because of the misconceptions about climbing.

  Jonathan Waterman

  Climbing, Hiking, Mountain Climbers

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• 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.

  John Marsden

  Climbing, Sky, Long

  John Marsden (1999). “A Killing Frost”, Laurel Leaf

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• Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.

  Reinhold Messner

  Nature, Travel, Climbing

  "All Fourteen 8,000ers". Book by Reinhold Messner, 1987.

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• One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

  John Muir

  Book, Adventure, One Day

  John Muir, Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1979). “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.95, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of ‘grand alpinisme’ to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs.

  Lionel Terray

  Mountain Peaks, Climbing, Goal

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• I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Real, Climbing, Hiking

  "Hammer of the Gods: Selected Writings".

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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

  Nature, Flower, Adventure

  John Muir, Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1979). “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.427, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

  John Muir

  Wisdom, Nature, Autumn

  Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1898

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• 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.

  Wilfrid Noyce

  Ocean, Adventure, Men

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• Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

  John Muir

  Yellowstone, Hiking, Mountain

  John Muir (2015). “JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more”, p.451, e-artnow

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• I've climbed with some of the best climbers in the world, more importantly, to me, they are some of the best people in the world. That's another reason why I climb.

  Jim Wickwire

  Funny, Climbing, People

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