Mountaineering Quotes - Page 6

• 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

  Inspirational, Home, Blow

  12 Copy quote

• We don't live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Happiness, Mean, Climbing

  34 Copy quote

• The solitary ascent of the Dru had the immediate effect of expanding the horizons of my ideas about mountaineering. It made me aware of possibilities well in advance of the times, which were characterized by very restricted methods. This was how the superb pyramid of K2 surfaced once more in the list of my projects. But I chose K2 as a way for giving concrete form to my new concept of mountaineering: to climb the second highest mountain in the world solo, alpine style, and without oxygen.

  Walter Bonatti

  Oxygen, Ideas, Pyramids

  18 Copy quote

• There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.

  Billy Connolly

  Being Happy, Running, Adventure

  38 Copy quote

• I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum of human cities torture.

  Lord Byron

  Climbing, Cities, Feelings

  'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' (1812-18) canto 3, st. 72

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Lionel Terray

  Beautiful, Men, Climbing

  20 Copy quote

• We cannot overlook the importance of wild country as source of inspiration, to which we give expression in writing, in poetry, drawing and painting, in mountaineering, or in just being there.

  Olaus Murie

  Country, Inspiration, Writing

  17 Copy quote

• Consider what you want to do in relation to what you are capable of doing. Climbing is, above all, a matter of integrity.

  Gaston Rebuffat

  Integrity, Climbing, Hiking

  59 Copy quote

• Mathematical study and research are very suggestive of mountaineering. Whymper made several efforts before he climbed the Matterhorn in the 1860's and even then it cost the life of four of his party. Now, however, any tourist can be hauled up for a small cost, and perhaps does not appreciate the difficulty of the original ascent. So in mathematics, it may be found hard to realise the great initial difficulty of making a little step which now seems so natural and obvious, and it may not be surprising if such a step has been found and lost again.

  Louis J. Mordell

  Party, Science, Appreciate

  7 Copy quote

• What one leads on-sight, in good, strong style, safely, is what one's ability is.

  Pat Ament

  Strong, Sight, Climbing

  Pat Ament (1997). “How to be a master climber in six easy lessons”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.

  Brian Andreas

  Rivers, Secret, Mountain

  13 Copy quote

• Near the foot of the mountain we visited a yogi who dwelled in a hollow tunneled beneath a boulder. He pondered our notion of climbing Shivling and said: 'First travel, then struggle, finally calm'.

  Greg Child

  Struggle, Climbing, Feet

  Greg Child (2012). “Mixed Emotions: Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child”, p.52, The Mountaineers Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Sports, Wise, Teacher

  27 Copy quote

• How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

  John Muir

  Inspirational, Nature, Light

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.351, Library of America

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed ! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, onyl the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate.

  Gaston Rebuffat

  Journey, Hiking, Rocks

  32 Copy quote

• The bizarre trend in mountaineers is not the risk they take, but the large degree to which they value life. They are not crazy because they don't dare, they're crazy because they do. These people tend to enjoy life to the fullest, laugh the hardest, travel the most, and work the least.

  Lisa Morgan

  Crazy, Climbing, Hiking

  45 Copy quote

• In 1977, I climbed a fairly difficult mountain for the first time, which was Mount McKinley, in Alaska. I climbed the so-called 'American Direct Route,' which was a route straight up to the top. I really enjoyed it. Through such experiences, I learned that mountaineering wasn't just about height. I found that different routes have different charms.

  Tamae Watanabe

  Alaska, Mountain, Different

  4 Copy quote

• In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

  Edward Abbey

  Rocks, Climbing, Hiking

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.47, RosettaBooks

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automaton in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.

  Walter Lippmann

  Giving Up, Men, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Pucky lads, a wee bit over their heads.

  Doug Scott

  Climbing, Climbs, Lad

  8 Copy quote

• I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

  Edmund Hillary

  Thinking, Climbing, Names

  "We knocked the bastard off" by David Fickling, www.theguardian.com. March 13, 2003.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not the critic who counts

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Courage, Military, Failure

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . .

  George Leigh Mallory

  Dream, Winning, Conquer

  28 Copy quote

• So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Courage, Badass, Military

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Success, Courage, Badass

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

  35 Copy quote

  Show source