Top 114 Quotes & Sayings by Reinhold Messner - Page 2

I am not so famous. I'm known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It's very relative, my fame.

There is no joy involved in climbing mountains, there is simply the challenge, the self-invented challenge, the play.

I am responsible for my brother's death. I feel the guilt of having survived. People say, 'You should be happy. You survived.' But I have this feeling that it is not right that I am alive.

For me the Everest solo was the icing on the cake of my climbs: the highest mountain in the world, during a monsoon, and as far as possible even on a new route, of course without oxygen.

The true alpinist doesn't want any infrastructure, he wants to go into the wild. And the odds of getting killed there are relatively high. And most people are sensible enough not to want that.

When I was a small child, I began on small mountains. Now, as I am getting older, the small peaks are getting bigger. If I am lucky, some day I will end on a small peak.

I am not so proud to climb all the 8,000-meter peaks, but I was proud to climb Nanga Parbat solo. That was the most elegant thing I did.

Gunther and I always shared the work. Each of us carried his own sleeping bag and tent, and porters carried the rest, until the highest camp, when we were on our own. Nobody helped us up there.

I have been in the most dangerous of places just in order to survive. An intelligent man would stay in a safe place to survive.

I would never bring a flag on the summit. If somebody is climbing for a country he is not normal, he is sick.

I had no ghost writers for the books - I wrote every line myself.

The art of climbing is the art of survival. The best climber is the man or woman going in the most crazy places but surviving.

Before kids, I was really going to the limit. Afterwards, I was approaching the limit but then maybe turning around.

There are periods on the mountain when you exist between living and dying, sometimes for days. I went through that with my brother on Nanga Parbat. It is very difficult, but it is the most intense experience. And always after such experiences, when I was back among people, I felt I had been reborn.

The only possibility to have a knowledge of both the Earth's nature and our own internal nature is through traditional climbing when you go on your own, far from safety, and encounter the unknown.

I was first to understand it was boring to go with heavy shoes to base camp. When we first tried Dhaulagiri, a very difficult approach at high altitude, we needed very heavy boots. So it was usual to wear such heavy boots to approach all base camps. But I thought this was crazy. We needed lighter shoes for many of the approaches.

I left many different mountains but always the gods gave me a chance to go back. I was always going with a quiet foot.

At 30 I was not quiet enough inside myself. At 40 I was not rich enough. At 50 I was still hoping to change the world.

Around half of the top alpinists have died climbing. Of course if I'm careful and turn back more often than the others, I can increase my chances of survival. But if I hadn't been lucky a few times, I wouldn't be here.

An account of an expedition is not a novel. Therefore an authentic account can never be given, let alone written down by someone who was not present.

In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.

Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing. It is becoming sport, indoors on small walls with holds where you cannot really fall.

I go to the wild mountains where I am responsible for myself. Step by step I am making sure that I don't die.

First, I am afraid to die and I love to live. But an adventure is only an adventure when there is the threat of dying.

On your own, relying on yourself, you will never feel you are stronger than the mountain, and your respect for the peak grows.

I am a South Tyrolean. I identify with this land.

For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.

Crossing the Gobi was a real milestone for me.

I am not an anarchist, but I am anarchistical.

I want to look into the dark spaces in people's souls. At what happens to us when we go to the mountains.

I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.

When I held in my hands the remains of Gunther, I had a strong feeling, like a phantom pain of an amputee.

I am my own home, and my handkerchief is my flag.

My brother is in me. When we remember somebody else, in a certain way they are still alive. I see my brother - he is still young - looking to the Dolomites where we did our ascents. I remember those moments, so he is still together with me.

The best climbers no longer go to the 8000ers, but to the most difficult mountains in the world which are 6000 or 7000-meter-peaks. There they find any kind of playground. But it is a pity that the really good climbers have fewer opportunities to finance their expeditions because so much attention is taken away by the Everest tourists.

The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world.

In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.

This is one of my definitions of mountaineering: to go where others do not.

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

I go to the mountains for an adventure and each time I pray I will get up and down again.

Bolts are the murder of the impossible.

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

If you have a high-way on Everest, you don't meet the mountain. If everything is prepared, and you have a guide who is responsible for your security, you cannot meet the mountain. Meeting mountains is only possible if you . . . are out there in self-suf?ciency.

I always take the same perspective with each new adventure. I put myself in the position of being at the end of my life looking back. Then I ask myself if what I am doing is important to me.

I was in continual agony; I have never in my life been so tired as on the summit of Everest that day. I just sat and sat there, oblivious to everything.

My market value increases with every outside critisism. Therefore, the frequently raised contention that I am the most highly critisized mountaineer does not disturb me in the slightest.

Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death through freezing - a pleasant one.

I want to solve a climbing problem in the mountains, not in the sporting goods store.

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again.

The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.

I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live.

Without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible.

Those that reach their goals perish.

...seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.