Reinhold Messner Quotes & Sayings

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. — Reinhold Messner

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. — Reinhold Messner

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. — Reinhold Messner

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-sufficiency. — Reinhold Messner

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. — Reinhold Messner

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. — Reinhold Messner

Without the possibility of death,
adventure is not possible. — Reinhold Messner

Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous. — Reinhold Messner

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

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

After every few steps, we huddle over our ice axes mouths agape, struggling for sufficient breath to keep our muscles going.... at a height of 8800 metres, we can no longer keep on our feet while we rest. We crumple to our knees, clutching our axes.... Every ten or fifteen steps we collapse into the snow to rest, then crawl on again. — Reinhold Messner

Those that reach their goals perish. — Reinhold Messner

I didn't go up there to die. I went up there to live. — Reinhold Messner

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 ... — Reinhold Messner

Bolts are the murder of the impossible. — Reinhold Messner

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. — Reinhold Messner