Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Mountaineers - Page 2

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.

The most important thing about expedition food is that there is some

We may train ourselves to be adaptable as possible, to respond appropriately in each situation, but the ideal of controlling the outcome or steering events as they occur must be relinquished. Chaos rules it all.

Sometimes you must sacrifice yourself on the altar of effort to be reminded of what and who you could become if you applied yourself.

It was cold. Space, the air we breathed, the yellow rocks, were deadly cold. There was something ultimate, passionless, and eternal in this cold. It came to us as a single constant note from the depths of space. We stood on the very boundary of life and death.

There is nothing in the world like going out onto an untouched, open, virgin mountain slope drenched under a thick blanket of new powder snow. It gives a supreme feeling of freedom, mobility. A great sense of flying, moving anywhere in a great white paradise.

Some of us wake up. Others roll over.

Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the cries of wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear, cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that my story may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world.

Like it or not taking risks, by a total commitment to the mountain and the vagaries of the weather, is essential for the greater satisfaction to be derived from mountaineering.

Effort and pain may not be avoided. Physical and psychological breakdowns occur. The support of a like-minded group, dedicated to The Art of Suffering, provides a safety net. An individual will push harder and risk more in the company of trustworthy peers.

In no other pursuit is the best or the worst in a man brought out as in mountaineering. An old friend of civilization may be a useless companion on a mountain.

Every move is a creation, Maintaining the delicate balance is a creation, The line is a creation, Survival is a creation, Freedom is a creation.

You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself.

Isn't a person who can live on nothing much stronger? I try to nurture that transformation in myself.

[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!

You don't really conquer a mountain, you conquer yourself. You overcome sickness & everything else - your pains, aches, fears - to reach the summit.

Relish the challenge of overcoming difficulties that would crush ordinary men...learn to suffer.

In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages.

Once I have a vision of something I want to accomplish, I tend to slog doggedly toward my goal until I achieve it; this is a skill from my youth.

...and while ambition sleeps inside of me I content myself with memories of glitter and despair.

Mountains don't kill people, they just sit there.

Take care of each other. Share your energies with the group. No one must feel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it.

It doesn't have to be fun to be fun.

I like things that are difficult, physically and mentally. Things that are really challenging, things that really maybe take a long time but really push me to my limits.

Everest? Don't forget it's really just a big pile of rocks.

The thing to be wished for, is not that the mountains should become easier, but that men should become wiser and stronger.

Death is not too great a price for a life fully lived.

I don't like egocentricity, which is something that I have arduously battled in myself my entire life.

I see one single suitable role for my life's work: for it to be a gift to others.

No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze.

For every hiker, climber or canoeist who gets into trouble, there are thousands more who don't. Peter Bronski's compelling account of misadventures in the Adirondacks is a necessary corrective for those who go into the mountains unwary of the dangers.

Enslavement to your own weakness - be it an addiction to alcohol, or to a woman or to fame - it's degrading, and it means losing your dignity and your freedom.

Milton, when he went blind, declared that he could now begin the real work of his life. Similarly, with the merciless passage of time reducing my phisical strengh, I find myself less able to explore the outer world, but better prepared to explore the inner.

It's [“Into Thin Air”] there in print forever. It's part of history. People should be above taking someone else down. And for what? For money and egos people are willing to destroy other people to further their careers.

The greatest rewards come only from the greatest commitment.

I believe that, with anything in life, if you have the patience, desire and passion, you can do whatever you set your mind to.

There was no more grass, no flowers, not even any moss: dusty granite blocks covered the ice and an occasional grinding groan reminded us that we were on a slow-moving glacier.

My friend Kurt Maix once described this diffidence as Fear's friendly sister, the right and necessary counterweight to that courage that urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction.

Ultimately, I wanted to own a big truck, exercise my second Amendment rights, listen to hardcore music, and let my congressman know how poorly he represents me. None of this could occur in France.

Great effort, fear and suffering sweet all the worthless chaff out of us.

If there is such a thing as spiritual materialism, it is displayed in the urge to possess the mountains rather than to unravel and accept their mysteries.

Yeah, but a mistake is a mistake even if you get away with it.

Inconsistency, incompetence, and lies are all cut short by the ground. It will stop you if you can't stop yourself.

Classic mountaineering grows out of a traditional romantic imagination. Its heart is the feeling, its path is blood, sweat and tears, and its restriction is God.

Stupidity is falling pray to your own illusions.

I don't actually care what I climb, only how it affects me. Which means the summit doesn't matter as much as the emotional process.

Pucky lads, a wee bit over their heads.

In this way the climber faces his second deadly threat. The first is naturally the risk of killing the. Second is immersed in the deceitfulness of mental and believing that you are worth as much as the public image.

Naturally, the top does not automatically make us better. Like the samurai frequented ordinary cutthroat, so sometimes extreme mountaineer can be self-centered, mythomaniac or crook to each yourself and the environment.

Other extremely alluring traits in people are simplicity and naturalness. Simplicity and naturalness are never painfully obvious qualities, and yet which I come across them in a person, I get this sense of a firm foundation and of a direct access to truth.

Climbing is about pioneering new routes, exploring new ground, facing the unknown. Those hooked on climbing the normal routes on the eight-thousanders will miss all theat. They are wasting the best years of their climbing lives.

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.

If you want to climb it badly enough, you will. So... why bother ?

So go ahead, break stuff. Break yourself on the once-hard edges of yourself. And recycle the debris into the foundation of your future.

One hour three times per week in the gym is no counterbalance to all of the other behavior in those other 165 hours

Goddamn it ! His parka doesn't fit me !

K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it.

Hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, your own physical and mental limitations - you will feel all of these. This teaches you about nature, more than that, you come face to face with yourself

Ever since a small boy, I have loved just to look at the mountains, to see them in different lights and from different angles, to feel their rough rock under my fingers and the breath of the winds against my feet... I am in love with the mountains.

Everything costs something everyone pays