Mountaineering Quotes

“Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination

“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, Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory

“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
― Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps

“Because it's there.”
― George Mallory

“I like the mountains because they make me feel small,' Jeff says. 'They help me sort out what's important in life.”
― Mark Obmascik, Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled--and Knuckleheaded--Quest for the Rocky Mountain High

“You need mountains, long staircases don't make good hikers.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“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, Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory

“...just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last”
― Fosco Maraini, Secret Tibet

“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

“My mind is in a state of constant rebellion. I believe that will always be so.”
― George Mallory

“[In mountaineering, if] we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the main point, and those who only wander in high places become part of the story.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Annapurna, to which we had gone emptyhanded, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins.

There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.”
― Maurice Herzog, Annapurna, First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak:

“...by bringing myself over the edge and back, I discovered a passion to live my days fully, a conviction that will sustain me like sweet water on the periodically barren plain of our short lives.”
― Jonathan Waterman

“I felt as though I were plunging into something new and quite abnormal. I had the strangest and most vivid impressions, such as I had never before known in the mountains. There was something unnatural in the way I saw Lachenal and everything around us. I smiled to myself at the paltriness of our efforts, for I could stand apart and watch myself making these efforts. But all sense of exertion was gone, as though there were no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity--these were not the mountains I knew: they were the mountains of my dreams (pp.206-207).”
― Herzog Maurice, Annapurna, First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak:

“Mountains bewitch the mind and provide repose and great delight.”
― D. K. Khullar, Carefree in the Mountains

“The steeper the trail, the nearer we’re to the top.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“High above our everyday life, there is another world, sculpted before any human ever walked the earth, and accessible only by our will to climb.”
― Michael Schauch, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya

“When I am climbing, the mountain is part of me, and I am part of it.”
― Michael Schauch, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya

“Self-confidence will give you that success which no other way can help, it is the prime key.

Look into the mirror, say- Yes! you can

Think once!”
― Bhawna Dehariya

“Breaking Everest by Stewart Stafford

On this Everest of déjà vu,
We broke up in avalanches,
Rote tumbling and tedium,
Dead stares at the bottom.

Climbers phoning in motion,
A poke for the All-Seeing Eye,
Pack mules heaving baggage,
Tense on the musical ski lifts.

Even with three tiny travellers,
That peak hosted no summits,
Cast-off hairshirt strait-jackets,
The wound-licking began afresh.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The biggest mountains are not climbed because of the quality of the equipment, or of the oxygen sets, or of the planning. Vital as those things are, they are only tools for men who have one goal, and who are so far masters of themselves that they can subdue their strong individualities in order to attain that goal. It was what we tried to do, under cover of a great deal of laughter, and while having an enormous amount of fun.”
― Charles Evans

“Many climb to seek glory, some in quest of awards and rewards. I have had my share of these, which were purely incidental.”
― DK Khullar, Carefree in the Mountains

“The Edge by Stewart Stafford

Hanging on the jagged edge,
Taunted to plunge in the deep,
Surfing wild on stormy winds,
Cold sweat at pain's brief sweep.

Nestled in some whirling gusts,
Gooseflesh skin from chilly hands,
A mask for a mimicry ball,
An everyman's muddled land.

Rising from some inner call,
Not a fugazi in Kismet's window.
The path still fogged from sight,
I climb higher, to touch the rainbow.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I would climb the mountains frequently to tune in my nature with theirs.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Even Mount Everest cannot replicate the mountains of the mind. They’re very tricky to negotiate and so tough to conquer.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“We had left camp in early morning darkness and moved across the barren, high-altitude desert like ghosts. Mostly we travelled in silence, broken only by the sound of mountain winds and the cracking of glacial ice echoing up the valleys. We used the gorges to gain our ground, scampering over boulder fields and countless glacier run-offs as we ascended mountainsides of shale and snow. We passed crumbling stone chortens marking trails long forgotten, and the ruins of shelters whose inhabitants had long since vanished. We'd watched a large herd of bharal sweep down the hillside before us like a grey tidal wave, their hooves delicately brushing over the ground as though they were part of the earth. Everything moved to a different beat out here, and, like the remnants of the primordial structures we passed, it felt as though we, too, were suspended in time, with the rest of the world oblivious to our existence.”
― Michael Schauch, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya

“Silent and awkward types yearn for the mountains.”
― Shin'ichi Sakamoto, The Climber, Vol. 1

“I had really learned that you can’t fall off a mountain. Whether you *can* fall off a mountain or not I don’t know, but I had learned that you can’t. That was the way it struck me.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums