Quotes & Sayings About Climbing Mountains

Stand tall on the summit after a tedious climb. Take in the remarkable scenery and the exhilaration of accomplishment. But don't pause for long; there are greater mountains to climb while you still possess the drive and capacity to do so. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Besides, it left the humans in the Culture free to take care of the things that really mattered in life, such as sports, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible problems, and climbing high mountains without the aid of a safety harness. — Iain M. Banks

Weeks and months are needed to accustom oneself to climbing. Otherwise, much energy is lost in clinging to the rock, maintaining too sure a hold, trying not to be too stiff, and worrying. After a while a climber warms to the mountains and can accomplish with little effort those things that once took all he had, for height gradually loses its meaning. Standing on the edge of a two-thousand-meter precipice becomes no less comfortable than sitting in a wicker chair on Capri, for it is possible to acquire some of the self-possession that enables mountain goats to stand for hours on a tiny ledge above an abyss. — Mark Helprin

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

Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert. — Giovanni Boccaccio

I was attracted to climbing mountains because of the physical dangers, but also the challenges, like 'mental fortitude, physical fortitude, judgement.' It's the intensity of the experience, at a sustained level. The experience is incredibly intense because it is so dangerous. — Lincoln Hall

How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared ... Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished ... Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No ... and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction ... fulfilled a destiny ... To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law ... — George Mallory

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

I hope you know that you are not alone, and in those hours when you feel that you are, just know there are other people out there - singing the same melodies of wanderlust, climbing over mountains in the dark, and waking in the night to stare at the moon, thinking of this large world and dreaming - just like you — Apex

Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. — Robert Macfarlane

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

There are parallels between filmmaking and climbing mountains just in terms of the commitment it requires, absolute devotion, and the belief that you are going to make a film and that the film is going to be OK, as well as the risks you have to take. You are never going to climb anything great if you don't take risks. — Jimmy Chin

Perhaps there's no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it's a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal. All you have to do is take one step at a time, place one foot in front of the other, and refuse to turn back until you've given everything you have. — Ken Ilgunas

On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain. — Larry Niven

Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed ! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, onyl the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate. — Gaston Rebuffat

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

In my youth I loved climbing and scrambling up rocks and mountains: now I seldom intrude on the dweller of a second story, and my greatest enemy or friend may avoid me altogether on the third; so humbled is the aspiring spirit of my youth. — Edward John Trelawny

In the mountains of wisdom no climbing is in vain. — Nhat Hanh

The fact that I am still alive, when so many friends and others climbing the 8000ers have died is humbling ... It is only death that has stopped many mountaineers from achieving the full tally of 14. — Alan Hinkes

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won't happen if you compromise away the entire process. — Yvon Chouinard

Climbing mountains is an act I happen to love, but it is only one form of adventure. There are thousands. In fact, there's one for every human with the passion to push personal boundaries. — Mark Jenkins

How shall I tell ye what it is, to feel the need of a place?" he said softly. "The need of snow beneath my shoon. The breath of the mountains, breathing their own breath in my nostrils as God gave breath to Adam. The scrape of rock under my hand, climbing, and the sight of the lichens on it, enduring in the sun and the wind."

His breath was gone and he breathed again, taking mine. His hands were linked behind mv head, holding me, face-to-face.
"If I am to live as a man, I must have a mountain," he said simply. — Diana Gabaldon

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

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

For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics. Together they form the whole basis of my concept of alpinism. Some people see no more in climbing mountains than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed but unfair. I don't deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty. — Walter Bonatti

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

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors - walking, leaping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Admittedly, man is small and insignificant in nature's scheme; but he is part of it. And are we to think less of the man who exposes himself to nature's forces than of him who just delights in looking at her, safe from dangers and tempests? Even those ridiculous earthworms know that an icicle can "sneeze"; but they have learned by obervation when and where it happens, and will do their best to avoid the danger with clear-eyes alertness and which they owe to their own daring. They are not deaf; they too hear the mighty voice of the mountains, but they understand and interpret it in a different way from those who enjoy it so passively and with such self-satisfaction. — Heinrich Harrer

You won't find me dancing in a club at night but you will find me climbing mountains to see the sunrise, with a glimmer of hope and a smile on my face ~ this is life baby and freedom fills my days. — Nikki Rowe

There is wisdom climbing mountains," Maderos said softly. "For they teach us how truly small we are. This is just a pebble within one kingdom. There are higher mountains you must climb." ~ The Wretched of Muirwood — Jeff Wheeler

Mountaineering is the art of getting up mountains by foot and occasionally by hand, and though the climbing is usually emphasized, most ascents are mostly a matter of walking(and since good climbers climb with their legs as much as possible, climbing could be called the art of taking a vertical walk). — Rebecca Solnit

*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

Many people often ask God for a sign, believing that the sign will be smooth sailing, perfect windspeed, moderate temperatures ... so when the winds dance and the waves sing and the temperatures confuse, they think that God's not there anymore. They believe that God is saying, "Watch out! Don't go there!" But the thing is, when something is good, it's not smooth sailing and perfect windspeed and moderate temperatures that are the signs to look out for! When something is good, it has mountain ranges, precipices, cliffs, eagles, tombstones covered in ivy and lily of the valley, mountain goats and a wind so close to the mouth of God that it shakes your flesh to its very core! So when they begin to hop on the precipices and hear the eagles' call - they think God isn't there! They think God is saying "Watch out!" They too often fail to traverse the ivy-encrusted tombstones, to tremble and quiver in beauty under God's breath. Don't run away. — C. JoyBell C.

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

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

In a general sense, I think it's bad to bring too much money into climbing, since it takes away a little from the beauty of the mountains. But at the same time, I can't blame the Nepali government - or the Indian, Pakistani or Chinese, depending on where you're climbing - from wanting to capitalize on foreign climbers. — Alex Honnold

I went into geology because I like being outdoors, and because everybody in geology seemed, well, they all seemed like free spirits or renegades or something. You know, climbing mountains and hiking deserts and stuff. — Kathy B. Steele

The road to glory is difficult with its rocks and boulders, its strain and struggle. Things aren't always as easy as we would like. Surprises and pitfalls wait for us along the road of life. We're going to sweat and sway, we're going to wonder why things are the way they are. But every road has an end; every mountain has its peak. If we can just hold on and keep climbing, knowing that God is aware of how we're straining, he will bring us up and over the mountains. — Thelma Wells

But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude. — Andy Serkis

(I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method ... rendering the God-spirit in the mountains. — Marsden Hartley

Salvation is worth working for. It is worth a man's going round the world on his hands and knees, climbing its mountains, crossing its valleys, swimming its rivers, going through all manner of hardship in order to attain it. But we do not get it in that way. It is to him who believes. — Dwight L. Moody

People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron ... 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. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for. — George Mallory

As de Saussure said, risk-taking brings with it its own reward: it keeps a "continual agitation alive" in the heart. Hope, fear. Hope, fear - this is the fundamental rhythm of mountaineering. Life, it frequently seems in the mountains, is more intensely lived the closer one gets to its extinction: we never feel so alive as when we have nearly died. — Robert Macfarlane

I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before - so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. — Henry David Thoreau

The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there. — Nancy Garden

Do not belong to those who only get their thoughts from books, or at the prompting of books,-it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action. — Rene Daumal

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them. — Edmund Hillary

She stared out. She saw a vastness, a rising shape, indistinct in the rain, gray in the misty drizzle. At first she had thought it was a cloud, a great bank of fog drifting up over the mountains, but now she realized with a cold awe that it was real, a vast building climbing the mountainside, rising in a countless series of rooms, stairways, balconies, and galleries, far away and immense, its topmost roofs white with snow. And up there, like a needle sharp with ice, one uttermost pinnacle flew the remote black pennant of the Watch.
The Tower of Song. — Catherine Fisher

For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man. — George Mallory

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

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. — Yvon Chouinard

I think climbing mountains or buildings or whatever has been a really good metaphor for finishing my work. Because no matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can't possibly do this, somehow you do. — Octavia Butler

What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols. — Anatole France

...But, all the same, it's a fine thing to go along waiting for what will happen next, crossing mountains, making your way through woods, climbing over cliffs, visiting castles, and putting up at inns free of charge, and the devil take the maravedi that is to pay. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I knew that people sometimes died climbing mountains. But at the age of twenty-three, personal mortality - the idea of my own death - was still largely outside my conceptual grasp. When I decamped from Boulder for Alaska, my head swimming with visions of glory and redemption on the Devils Thumb, it didn't occur to me that I might be bound by the same cause-and-effect relationships that governed the actions of others. Because I wanted to climb the mountain so badly, because I had thought about the Thumb so intensely for so long, it seemed beyond the realm of possibility that some minor obstacle like the weather or crevasses or rime-covered rock might ultimately thwart my will. At — Jon Krakauer

I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats. — Jack Kerouac

There is wisdom in climbing mountains ... For they teach us how truly small we are. — Jeff Wheeler

The climbing of earths heights, in itself, means little. That men and women want and try to climb them means everything. For it is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that we are never so much human as when we are striving for what is beyond our grasp, and that there is no battle worth the winning save that against our own ignorance and fear. — James Ramsey Ullman

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

too young to live, too old to die — Jeffrey Rasley

The mountains were there and so was I. — Maurice Herzog

Eastward the dawn rose, ridge behind ridge into the morning, and vanished out of eyesight into guess; it was no more than a glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of the memory and old tales, of the high and distant mountains. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Mountains were once my big adventure but is is over since a long time; I still dream from the wonderful days sometimes, read also a few pages from a mountain book. But the thought of doing again active mountain climbing has faded. — Fritz Zwicky

Climbing is one of the few sports in which the arena (the cliffs, the mountains and their specific routes) acquire a notoriety that outpopulates, outshines and outlives the actual athletes. — Jonathan Waterman

I know I can't own a hilltop, a meadow, or a mountainside. But keeping it a secret somehow makes it mine. — Joyce Rachelle

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

Climbing mountains is strength; moving mountains is faith. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

Speed is not a priority, just enjoy your hike - Keep smile — Barry Perdana Putra

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

There may be more to learn by climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains. — Richard Nelson

Climbing is actually a great sport for blind people and that carried me on to climbing bigger and bigger mountains, snowy mountains, ice faces, and developing different techniques to be able to do that. — Erik Weihenmayer

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson's last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel - how shall I put this? - mentally sound. — Carrie Fisher

He says that we have learned nearly all that we know from them, and have been made a nobler people; and he says that the Men that have lately come over the Mountains are hardly better than Orcs.'
That is true', answered Sador; 'true at least of some of us. But the up-climbing is painful, and from high places it is easy to fall low. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion. — Anatoli Boukreev

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

I grew up climbing mountains in Montana and Wyoming and my wife and I were engaged on top of a mountain peak: Hyalite Peak in Montana. It was a 15-mile hike to get to the top of that, round-trip - thankfully, she said yes. — Steve Daines

Meditation is another dimension of natural beauty. People talk about appreciating natural beauty-climbing mountains, seeing giraffes and tigers in Africa, and all sorts of things. But nobody seems to appreciate this kind of natural beauty of ourselves. This is actually far more beautiful than flora and fauna, far more fantastic, far more painful and colorful and delightful. — Chogyam Trungpa

Another day I walked out of town to do a bit of climbing in the mountains behind the airport. I scrambled up and down slopes that contained some of the oldest rocks in the world, isotope-dated at 3,800 billion years, remnants, so the geological rumor goes, of the earth's earliest terrestrial crust. — Lawrence Millman

The mountains have rules. they are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul. — Walter Bonatti

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. — Wojciech Kurtyka

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic ... So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space ... — Edward Abbey

They say that if the Swiss had designed these mountains they'd be rather flatter. — Paul Theroux

The reason for not getting married was that I just didn't have a partner to get married to. Climbing mountains was more attractive to me than marriage, or other fun things like that. — Tamae Watanabe

I didn't doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues ... problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots. — Jon Krakauer

One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain climbing over molehills. — Earl Wilson

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

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one - fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish. — Maggie Stiefvater

My Everest is not your Everest. Your Everest is not mine. We all have an Everest. Each of us. Sometimes the peak is literally Mount Everest but most times it lies deep within us, figuratively occupying a mountainous inner space. It calls us to rise up, to do what we formerly labeled as impossible, and to be who we deeply and desperately want to be. I know that I have found an Everest when my soul furiously pokes me repeatedly until I listen. Heeding this call to passionate adventure of any sort initiates a journey of intense immense proportion that changes every molecule of my being. — T.A. Loeffler

I like mountains, always have done. Big obstinate bits of rock sticking up where they're not wanted and getting in folk's way. Great. Climbing them is a different matter altogether though. I hate that. — Mark Lawrence

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

During my three seasons at Mount Rainier I learned a lot about mountain climbing and rescues, about politics and camaraderie in the mountains, and about what being a woman climber means. Now I know in all certainty when to bring my toothbrush and when to leave it at home, and, all things considered, that kind of confidence is hard to come by. The greatest skill I ever had, though, was the one I started with: being able to suffer for long periods of time and not die. In exchange, I got to see some amazing things. — Bree Loewen

There was joy in getting his blood pressure down ... joy in climbing Mount Everest ... joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world's highest mountains ... joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes ... joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That's the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals. — Zig Ziglar

While ice is not really alive, it is certainly animate. It exists in an dynamic state of perpetual vibration, flux and movement. Enjoy its existence, and its safe passage in the mountains. — Wil McCarthy

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

Half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience - visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible. — George Leigh Mallory