Climbing Life Quotes & Sayings

Climbing your personal Everest, do your best to make sure it won't end up being your Calvary. — Sahara Sanders

And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life. — Charles Dickens

So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don't worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don't stop climbing, the stairs won't end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards — Franz Kafka

This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me to life. When excitement wells up inside my chest in a way that doesn't happen in every day life. Today my fingertips were cracked and bleeding. I made no progress despite great conditions. Now I am on the ground and can hardly contain my excitement to get back on the wall. It's a crazy rollercoaster and I owe my family and partners a great deal for encouraging me through it all. — Tommy Caldwell

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. — Doug Scott

STRAUSS:Have you ever thought about putting those experiences into a book?
RICHIE:I did decide to write about what i experienced in climbing to the top. And finally when I got there, I discovered what was at the top.You know what was there?
STRAUSS: No, I don't.
RICHIE: Nothing. Not one thing. What was at the top was all the experiences that you had to get there. — Neil Strauss

Peculiar or not, it is my idea of pleasure. Why, why else do you lead this life you don't enjoy it? Don't talk of duty to me; you men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging yourselves. You go gallivanting over the earth, climbing mountains, looking for the sources of the Nile; and expect women to sit dully at home embroidering. I embroider very badly. I think I would excavate rather well. — Elizabeth Peters

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he's coming down. — John Ortberg

I'm going to be climbing for my whole life. — Chris Sharma

When life brings you mountains, you don't waste your time asking why; you spend your time climbing over them. — A.J. Darkholme

Living a life is much like climbing mountains-the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man has a goal, he always feels he's working toward something. — Louis L'Amour

The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You cannot slide up. You have to cut every step with an ice axe. Only with incessant labor in cutting and chipping can you make any progress. If you want to know how to backslide, leave off going forward. Cease going upward and you will go downward of necessity. You can never stand still. — Charles Spurgeon

When you're climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable. — Edmund Hillary

One only gets to the top rung on the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly, all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you - suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, 'Well, I'll have a go, too.' — Margaret Thatcher

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. — Charles Dickens

She was in herself, like a woman near term,
and did not think of the man, going on ahead,
or the path, climbing upwards towards life.
She was in herself. And her being-dead
filled her with abundance.
As a fruit with sweetness and darkness,
so she was full with her vast death. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed. — Carol Rifka Brunt

A mist crept into the valley - how could this be, by the light of the climbing sun? It drifted over the form in the grass, nearly obscuring it, seeming to draw all sound into itself. I thought I might burst from the strain of that silence... until a single sound shattered it:

The gasp of an indrawn breath. — Tosca Lee

We do what we have to, to live. Sometimes that means breaking a rocks heart, or pushing roots down into ground that screams againest the intrusion. As for you-how else should our children climb to the star's but up our branches? We made our peace with that fact a long time ago, that we would be used and maybe forgotten. So be it. What you learn in your climbing will make all the life on this planet greater, more precious. And when it comes to that, who writes the things written in your body, your life? And who reads?-Our cases aren't that much different? — Diane Duane

We can only climb the mountains because there's a valley that makes the mountain a mountain. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. — Amy Clampitt

Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That's what life's all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off. — Wally Lamb

Yes, we had made and excursion into another world and we had come back, but we had brought the joy of life and of humanity back with us. In the rush and whirl of everyday things, we so often live alongside one another without making any mutual contact. We had learned on the North Fae of the Eiger that men are good, and the earth on which we were born is good."(p.126) — Heinrich Harrer

Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It's both meditative and contemplative. Whether you're weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body's working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too. — BikeSnobNYC

Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.
But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet. — Elizabeth Warren

Here we say that life is a cliff, and you must never turn around and look back when you're climbing. — Paul Bowles

I think anything that you put your life's energy into becomes part of your identity. It would be difficult for the Rolling Stones to not play rock and roll anymore, because that's their image of themselves. When you've convinced everybody that that's who you are, that's who you are. — Jim Bridwell

Sometimes in life all we can do is keep climbing, even when it doesn't make any sense anymore. — Cameron Jace

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; and the realist adjusts the sails — William Arthur Ward

Life is brought down to the basics: if you are warm, regular, healthy, not thirsty or hungry, then you are not on a mountain ... Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall - it's great when you stop. — Chris Darwin

To assist us in climbing the mountains is marvelous. To level the mountains and altogether eliminate the climb is miraculous. And at times I think that God prefers the latter because it emboldens us to face the former. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees — Philip Roth

Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I was born the 26th of December ... Arrive by dint of perseverance, but step by step ... Tenancy to exaggerate the importance of earthly life. Avaricious of self. Constant in their affections and their hatreds ... Yes, the Capricorn is a beast of solitude. Slow, steady, and persevering. Lives on several levels at once. Thinks in circles. Fascinated by death. Ever climbing, climbing. In search of the edelweiss, presumably. Or could it be immortelle? Knows no mother. Only "the mothers". Laughs little and usually on the wrong side of the face ... Speaks truthfully instead of kindly. Metaphysics, abstractions, electromagnetic displays. Dives to the depths. Sees stars, comets, and asteroids where others see only moles, warts, and pimples. Feeds on himself when tired of playing the man-eating shark. A paranoiac. An ambulatory paranoiac. But constant in his affections - and his hatreds. Ouais! — Henry Miller

Life is easy when you're hot. But what happens when the ball bounces the other way? You just keep getting back up and climbing up. — Bill Walton

It's easy when you're climbing something. Don't look down, or even too far ahead. Focus on where you are in that moment. — Sheba Karim

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. — Richard Rohr

I'll be on another case soon. You won't need me anymore. You'll be walking, though I think you should wait a while before climbing another mountain."

"You're my therapist," Blake snapped.

Dione gave a little laugh. "For months you've depended on me more than any other person in your life. Your perspective is distorted now.
Believe me, by the time I've been gone a month, you won't even think about me."

'Do you mean you'd just turn your back on me and walk away?" he asked disbelievingly. — Linda Howard

I wanted so much when I was young. I was an endless abyss of want, of need of desperate dreams for myself that defied logic. The promise of what was to come hung like rings around the moon on clear autumn nights; the future was unmistakeable. It was always there, glistening in the dark and suggesting that life was little more than climbing a ladder into the sky, where I could reach up with one hand and secure everything that I had ever hoped for in my grasping fingers.
Oh, I dreamed.
And they are not easy to give up, these dreams. — Nicole Baart

Together we knew toil, joy and pain. My fervent wish is that the nine of us who were united in face of death should remain fraternally united through life. — Maurice Herzog

If you want someone to be ignored then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town. It doesn't matter how great you were, it'll always take an unfunny drunk with climbing skills to make people notice you. — Banksy

So today, with our average life span in much of the world climbing past eighty years, we are already oddities living well beyond our appointed time. — Atul Gawande

Our first thought is always for those on life's first rung, and how we might increase their chances of climbing. — Mitch Daniels

Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing. — Charles Bukowski

The corporate myth is over. If you've spent years climbing the corporate ladder,
have you ever stopped to notice the view? What view, you ask? The rear end of the
person in front of you. That's what you get to look forward to. If that's the way you
want to view the rest of your life, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you
are sick and tired of looking at someone else's behind, then read on. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

A world like that is not really natural, or (the thought strikes one later) perhaps it really is, only more so. Parts of it are neither land nor sea and so everything is moving from one element to another, wearing uneasily the queer transitional bodies that life adopts in such places. Fish, some of them, come out and breathe air and sit about watching you. Plants take to eating insects, mammals go back to the water and grow elongate like fish, crabs climb trees. Nothing stays put where it began because everything is constantly climbing in, or climbing out, of its unstable environment. — Loren Eiseley

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

Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view
and feel exalted
and your eyes are full of happy tears
and you want to sing
and wish you had wings! And then
you can't stay there, but must continue your journey
you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten. — Lloyd C. Douglas

For me now, I feel that climbing is a part of who I am. It's my way of life. It's my way of expressing myself. My way of being in the world. In the past, I questioned it a lot. Now it's obvious. This is who I am. This is what I do. — Chris Sharma

When you're at rock bottom, strap on a different pair of boots and start climbing - The New Mrs D — Heather Hill

Never stop climbing mountains! They are like any other challenge in life; once you go across them, pleasure is all yours. — Karma Gurung

*I love climbing mountains in all fields (Whatever was this fields).
*I love tranquility and it is more for me precious than money.
*Honesty is a few valuable nowadays.
after willing of God and Step by step with Concentration i will achieve What I want to. — Charles Dickens

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow. — Maya Angelou

My life has become a reality show. When I am home, people are climbing trees with cameras. I feel that my personal space is being encroached upon. I will try and protect it as much as I can. — Ranbir Kapoor

Life is like a mountain: after climbing up one side and sliding down the other, put up the sled. — Josh Billings

In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of ... something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb ... and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery. — Rob Parker

Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think. — Jay McInerney

Believer, your life is too essential to waste on pettiness or word wars, greed or ladder climbing, anger or bitterness, fear or anxiety, regret or disappointment. Life is too short. We must run, not walk, the way of Isaiah 58, embracing authentic faith manifested through mercy and community. Living on mission requires nothing less. It is a grand adventure, a true voyage into the kingdom of God. Would you lose days, months, years pointing fingers and quarreling, or would you rather break yokes of oppression? Imagine what would happen if we all chose the latter. — Jen Hatmaker

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. — Peter Matthiessen

Adults want to talk about death way less than people my age do. Death is the Santa Claus of the adult world. Except Santa Claus in reverse. The guy who takes all the presents away. Big bag over the shoulder, climbing up the chimney carrying everything in a person's life, and taking off, eight-reindeered, from the roof. — Maria Dahvana Headley

It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess. — Harper Lee

I promise to keep my hands, tongue, and other body parts to myself. You risk your life by staying home. It's late and we're both too wiped out to go climbing into the People's lair tonight. What do you risk by coming with me?"
"A huge migraine from being in your company. — Ilona Andrews

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. — Charles Bukowski

Phil Ershler is a world class climber and guide. Sue Ershler is a first class businesswoman. But their story is not just about climbing and business. It is about two people in love who switch leads in life's hard climb. A great read - inside or outside a tent! — Jim Whittaker

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of "playing". A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which "neighborhoods" have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of "neighbor childrens" houses or play in "backyards". In the absence of sidewalks in newer "gated" coummunities, children cannot "walk" to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A "playdate" is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.
In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you've been awaiting. — Joyce Carol Oates

I stretched out my hands, holding the falling sun in one hand, and the climbing moon in the other, my silver and gold, my gift from life. My gift of life. My life is a hesitation in time. An opening in a cave. A gap for a word. — Jeanette Winterson

You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing. — Robertson Davies

Heck, who needs things like skydiving and rock climbing for your adreline kick, if you can get it from playing Russian roulette with open windows? — Traveller

Unlike most of life, what you do really matters. Your actions have real consequences. You have to pay attention and focus, and that's very satisfying. It forces you to pay great attention and you lose yourself in the task at hand. Without the risk, that wouldn't happen, so the risk is an essential part of climbing, and that's hard for some people to grasp. You can't justify the risk when things go wrong and people die. The greater the risk, the greater the reward in most aspects of life, and in climbing that's certainly true, too. It's very physical, you use your mind and your body. — Jon Krakauer

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me - I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had "borrowed" from her class at school. And then there was L.A. - all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different. — Paula Stokes

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior

Learn well how to climb because you will come across with many hills and mountains in your short life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

you're the fly on the wall hearing all, seeing all

ears of a wall hearing all the secrets

perhaps you're the vines creeping over

the old abandoned mansion walls

dusty, soulless and dead

bringing a certain curious life to rubble

and I think you're the jewel-eyed gecko

sneaking around the warm summer walls

between jasmine and olive branches

sticky pad toes, clinging to the walls

peeking in at lonely summer spicy love-making

through silk curtains from the bright orient

breathing in incense and tasting decadence

climbing the sharply barbed walls

the smooth cemented white-washed walls

because walls breathe too — Moonshine Noire

We see the span of her life unspooling in colorful threads and we chase it, wrapping it around our hands as more tumbles out. She's her mother's age now. Double her age. Our age. You're our mother. We're climbing inside of you. — Brit Bennett

I like the mountains because they make me feel small,' Jeff says. 'They help me sort out what's important in life. — Mark Obmascik

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread. — Maurice Herzog

All of us need just one good accomplishment in order to get by. Obviously he can't spend the rest of his life climbing trees, but it's the agility and enterprise involved in the act that will make him a survivor. Enough — Ruskin Bond

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. — Criss Jami

Undoubtedly, the mind is restless and hard to control But it can be trained by constant practice and by freedom from desire." - B.K.S. Iyengar.

Climbing is really great, we all love climbing. But what's interesting to me is what happens in my head or in my life because of it. Ultimately, I think climbing is a vehicle for exploration - of the world, of the self. — Steph Davis

Our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and understands that this process of climbing higher takes preparation, time, and commitment. He understands that we will make mistakes at times, that we will stumble, that we will become discouraged and perhaps even wish to give up and say to ourselves it is not worth the struggle. We know it is worth the effort, for the prize, which is eternal life, is "the greatest of all the gifts of God." And to qualify, we must take one step after another and keep going to gain the spiritual heights we aspire to reach. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

when you get to the peak, remember the valley exists — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside. — Marie Rutkoski

In climbing, sponsors typically support an athlete but provide very little direction, giving the climber free rein to follow his or her passion toward whatever is inspiring. It's a wonderful freedom, in many ways similar to that of an artist who simply lives his life and creates whatever moves him. — Alex Honnold

One never stops climbing, Julie, unless he wants to stop and vegetate. There's always something just ahead. — Irene Hunt

She imagined the reading she did now as like climbing inside one of those deep old beds she'd seen in a museum, with a sliding door to close behind you: even as she was suffering with a book and could hardly bear it, felt as if her heart would crack with emotion or with outrage at injustice, the act of reading it enclosed and saved her. Sometimes when she moved back out of the book and into her own life, just for a moment she could see her circumstances with a new interest and clarity, as if they were happening to someone else. — Tessa Hadley

The cheerfulness and buoyancy of our youth are due partly to the fact that we are climbing the hill of life and do not see death that lies at the foot of the other side. — Anonymous

To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained, and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides. So I went on towards the top, but always experiencing the sides. I had a long way to go but I was in no hurry. I went in little steps - just one step after another - but each step towards the top. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy - very busy - without being very effective. — Stephen R. Covey

One of the differences between us was that Marc wanted very badly to climb the Eiger, while I wanted very badly only to have climbed the Eiger. Marc, understand, is at that age when the pituitary secretes an overabundance of those hormones that mask the subtler emotions, such as fear. He tends to confuse things like life-or-death climbing with fun. — Jon Krakauer

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, 'What do you do to stay in shape?' My glib answer is, 'I play.' But I mean it. Sure, I go to the gym, but I don't spend my life there. Most of my activity is outdoors, whether it's basketball or mountain biking or rock climbing. — Jason Lewis

Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I went whenever I could, and always my eyes lifted to the hills. I was to find a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindness of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world. — Alfred Wainwright

People come to Portland, many of them for the quality of life. They love the physical space here. And yet every year, people climbing the mountain get killed by avalanches. — Chelsea Cain

What draws me to the type of snowboarding that I'm doing now is, I go through every emotion in life when I'm climbing these mountains. The fear. The anticipation before that. Getting to the top and the joy of standing on top, and then the adrenaline on going down, and then the kind of overwhelming emotions that I get at the bottom. That whole process is really addicting, and makes me feel alive. — Jeremy Jones

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. — Jon Krakauer

There was more than getting justice for a wronged woman," Michael added. "I also met you. One of the most extraordinary experiences in my life." Nothing had been the same for him since.
"Not much remarkable about that," she demurred.
"You sought out Nemesis not for yourself, but for your friend. It was bloody amazing what you did during that job. When Nemesis needed your help again, you answered the call. Just tonight, you'd been afraid but willing to make the climb down the side of Covington Hall. Damned extraordinary." Thank God he'd been too distracted by climbing to think about the fact that she'd had her arms and legs wrapped around him, her body tight against his.
A corner of her mouth turned up. "Oh, when you put it like that, maybe I am rather special."
"Sodding right." A silence fell. But he wasn't willing to let it linger — Zoe Archer

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

Death is a gift. Without it we wouldn't value life. — John Bachar

cigarettes before climbing out onto the fire escape for her monthly ritual. With a shaky hand, she flicked her lighter to life and lit what she knew was a cancer stick. The alcohol and — Jez Strider

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia? — Jeanne Moreau