Mountain Climbing Quotes

• May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

  Edward Abbey

  Inspirational, Nature, Adventure

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.12, University of Arizona Press

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• Going to the mountains is going home.

  John Muir

  Home, Adventure, Hiking

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.721, Library of America

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• Many climbers become writers because of the misconceptions about climbing.

  Jonathan Waterman

  Climbing, Hiking, Mountain Climbers

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• I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.

  Leslie Stephen

  Believe, Men, Mountain Peaks

  Leslie Stephen (2013). “The Playground of Europe”, p.220, Cambridge University Press

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• 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.

  George Leigh Mallory

  Life, Motivational, Travel

  "We knocked the bastard off" by David Fickling, www.theguardian.com. March 13, 2003.

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• The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.

  Al Neuharth

  Funny, Attitude, Climbing

  Al Neuharth (1992). “Confessions of an S.O.B.”, Signet

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• Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

  Ed Viesturs

  Sports, Nature, Travel

  Ed Viesturs, David Roberts (2011). “The Will to Climb: Obsession and Commitment and the Quest to Climb Annapurna--the World's Deadliest Peak”, p.87, Crown

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• There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing

  Ranulph Fiennes

  Running, Adventure, Weather

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• There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.

  Billy Connolly

  Being Happy, Running, Adventure

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• Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.

  Doug Larson

  Inspirational, Positive, Running

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• The greatest hazard in life is to risk NOTHING.

  William Arthur Ward

  Life, Deep Love, Climbing

  William Arthur Ward, “Risk”

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• Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.

  Reinhold Messner

  Nature, Travel, Climbing

  "All Fourteen 8,000ers". Book by Reinhold Messner, 1987.

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  Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

  John Muir

  Travel, Home, Tired

  "Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays".

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• Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  LEO BUSCAGLIA, PH.D. (1982). “LIVING, LOVING & LEARNING”

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• I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

  John Muir

  Nature, Flower, Adventure

  John Muir, Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1979). “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.427, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain

  Jack Kerouac

  Motivational, Wisdom, Travel

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• 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

  Funny, Wall, Climbing

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• 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

  Journey, Hiking, Rocks

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• 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

  Crazy, Climbing, Hiking

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• To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.

  Al Alvarez

  Mistake, Climbing, Routine Life

  "Our enduring desire to court deadly risk" by Peter Beaumont, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2012.

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• Climbing is the lazy man's way to enlightenment. It forces you to pay attention, because if you don't, you won't succeed, which is minor - or you may get hurt, which is major. Instead of years of meditation, you have this activity that forces you to relax and monitor your breathing and tread that line between living and dying. When you climb, you always are confronted with the edge. Hey, if it was just like climbing a ladder, we all would have quit a long time ago.

  Duncan Ferguson

  Hurt, Men, Hiking

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• 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

  Motivational, Home, Mean

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• In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

  Edward Abbey

  Rocks, Climbing, Hiking

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.47, RosettaBooks

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• 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

  Taken, Climbing, Wind

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• When you ride your bike, you're working your legs, but your mind is on a treadmill. When you play chess, your mind is clicking along, but your body is stagnating. Climbing brings it together in a beautiful, magical way. The adrenaline is flowing, and it's flowing all the time.

  Pat Ament

  Beautiful, Climbing, Play

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