Top 702 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Explorers - Page 6

It has been a long road. From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax.

To wait idly is the worst of conditions.

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.

I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.

If I know I make this much trouble, I never climb Everest.

I did not set out to be a poster child for anything. I saw a mountain. I wanted to climb it.

The musquetos continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist. My dog even howls with the torture he experiences.

I now say that the oldest man living never heard of the president of a great nation to come down to open electioneering for his successor. It is treating the nation as if it was the property of a single individual, and he had the right to bequeath it to whom he pleased - the same as a patch of land for which he had the patent.

Not much has been written about the Nereids of modern Greece. Wherever there is a warm, healing stream they believe that it flows from the breasts of the Nereids.

The rain, which had continued yesterday and last night, ceased this morning. We then proceeded, and after passing two small islands about ten miles further, stopped for the night at Piper's landing, opposite another island.

I love home cooking, and I'm not a great one for fast food.

Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.

I am severely dyslexic, so I'm not the person who can do a lot of typing, writing and mathematics. I don't excel in anything except in things that had to do with creativity and things with my hands. I like to build things and take things apart.

I have not told the half of what I saw.

When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was my hero and the person who inspired me to become an underwater explorer. I have many other people who inspired me after him, but he is still my all-time hero.

I have climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life.

In the decline of the day, near Kentucky river, as we ascended the brow of a small hill, a number of Indians rushed out of a thick cane-brake upon us, and made us prisoners.

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.

There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

Solitude is an excellent laboratory in which to observe the extent to which manners and habits are conditioned by others.

All of us want to be better. Human nature is always seeking advancement.

Who is the architect? I am the architect.

No one will pay you for planning an expedition at first: you have to work in pubs at weekends so you can pay the gas bills. I joined the Territorial Army, which paid me when I turned up to drill nights, and so did my wife.

Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite and their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some mood of fury.

Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.

Socialism is a return to primitive conditions.

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go.

In the road ships must ride in 30, 40, or 50 fathom water, not above half a mile from the shore at farthest: and if there are many ships they must ride close one by another.

And now, without having wearied my friends, I hope, with detailed scientific accounts, theories, or deductions, I will only say that I have endeavoured to tell just the story of the adventure itself.

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

I've decided I'm going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty is just too good to pass up.

True navigation begins in the human heart. It's the most important map of all.

We need a new global culture that finds the existence of millions of thirsty people thoroughly and immediately unacceptable.

Adventure is a sign of incompetence.

It is the experiences, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive!

In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

Don't let the Disney princess hair fool you.

There can be no conquest to the man who dwells in the narrow and small environment of a groveling life, and there can be no vision to the man the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self. But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by men who had high ideals and who have received great visions. The path is not easy, the climbing is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile.

Alas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view.

The ultimate starting point for planning any adventure or expeditionby far and away the greatest book on earth

The Europeans and Americans residing in the town of Zanzibar are either Government officials, independent merchants, or agents for a few great mercantile houses in Europe and America.

Never underestimate the incompetence of government.

My ship was also in better condition than when she sailed from Boston on her long voyage. She was still as sound as a nut, and as tight as the best ship afloat. She did not leak a drop - not one drop!

You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it, you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.

If you don't come home with data, you've done nothing.

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.

You have to know why you get up every morning.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west, perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia.

We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

I am not afraid of death, but would not want to die in some obscure or pointless way.

There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. The tales of rough usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also are the tales of sea danger. To face the elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea, and know that you know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.

Mount Harris is of basaltic formation, but I could not observe any columnar regularity in it, although large blocks are exposed above the ground. The rock is extremely hard and sonorous.

I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below.

I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.

What I had not counted on was discovering how closely a man could come to dying and still not die, or want to die. That, too, was mine; and it also is to the good. For that experience resolved proportions and relationships for me as nothing else could have done; and it is surprising, approaching the final enlightenment, how little one really has to know or feel sure about.

It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.

Man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer a man.