"Adventure means risking something, and it is only when we are doing that, that we know what a splendid thing life is and how well it can be lived. The person who never dares, never does; the person who never risks, never wins. It is far better to venture and fail than to lie on a rug like a sleepily purring cat. Only fools laugh at failure; wise people laugh at the lazy and the too contented and at those who are so timid that they dare undertake nothing."
- A.Gerboult - Alone Around the World
"Find what we most want to do; do it, no matter what; and in the doing be guaranteed a very difficult and very happy lifetime."
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer…climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Natures peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
- John Muir
"These are privileged and exceptional occasions…go out alone on the hills and listen. You will hear much: the winds will hold for you something more than sound; the voice of the stream will not be merely the babbling of hurrying waters. The trees and flowers are not so separate from you as they are at other times, but very near; the same substance, the same rhythm, the same song binds you to them. Alone amidst nature, a person learns to be one with all and all with One."
- Frank Smythe
"The truth is that part of the essence of mountain climbing is to push oneself to ones limits. Inevitably this involves risk, otherwise they would not be ones limits. This is not to say that you deliberately try something which you are not sure you can do."
- W.Sayre - Four Against Everest
"We have all of us had our 'moments' either on the mountains, or perhaps in some distant view of them, when life and joy have assumed new meanings and the worlds horizon suddenly broken down and shown us realms of dream beyond and yet beyond."
- F. Bourdillian
"Nature-love as Emerson knew it, and as Wordsworth knew it, and as any of the choicer spirits of our time have known it, has distinctly a religious value. It does not come to a man or a woman who is wholly absorbed in selfish or worldly or material ends. Except ye become in a measure as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of Nature - as Audubon entered it, as Thoreau entered it, as Bryant and Amiel entered it, and as all those enter it who make it a resource in their lives and an instrument of their culture. The forms and creeds of religion change, but the sentiment of religion - the wonder and reverence and love we feel in the presence of the inscrutable universe - persist…If we do not go to church as much as did our fathers, we go to the woods much more, and are much more inclined to make a temple of them than they were."
- John Burroughs
"I lift my hat to the new explorers [space travel] - in many ways I regret I can't be one of them - but I was never competent enough, and I'm not very good at taking orders. Some day I wouldn't mind betting, there'll be room in space for a different type of person - perhaps a little more like me - enthusiastic, resourceful, aven a little irresponsible. They'll be found in all sorts of strange corners and they won't always have official permission. But when the pressure comes on I'm inclined to think they'll perform, achieve, and die with the best there is."
- Sir Edmund Hillary
Solitary climbing teaches self-reliance, makes a person observant and if it is to be safely carried out, imposes prudence and self-control. Best of all, it brings the climber into intimate contact with the beauties of the mountains."
- Frank Smythe
"if I had my life to live over again, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously….I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets….I would have more actual problems and fewer imaginary ones…oh I have had my moments, and if I had to do it over again I'd have more of them. In fact I'd have nothing else. Just moments, one right after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day….If I had my life to live over I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hookey more often. I wouldn't make good grades except by accident. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies…."
- Nadine Stair (85 years old)
"Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don't really own anything. What is this competition we feel then, before we go, one at a time,through the same gate?"
- Jedaluddin Rumi (13th century Sufi mystic)
"In climbing where the danger is great, all attention has to be given the ground step by step, leaving nothing for beauty by the way. But this care, so keenly and narrowly concentrated, is not without advantages. One is thoroughly aroused. Compared with the alertness of the senses and corresponding precision and power of the muscles on such occasions, one may be said to sleep all of the rest of the year. The mind and body remain awake for sometime after the dangerous ground has passed, so that arriving on the summit with the grand outlook - all the world spread below - one is able to see it better, and brings to the feast a far keener vision, and reaps richer harvests than would have been possible ere the presence of danger summoned them to life."
- John Muir
“The hills not only take humans away from a complex mode of existence, but they teach them that to be happy it is only necessary to have food, a shelter and warmth. They bring them face to face with realities, and in doing so inculate a valuable lesson in the association of simplicity and happiness.
For these reasons any development that tends to bring into close contact with the natural order of things is a value to humankind, inasmuch as it helps them to gain a sense of proportion. It is impossible for any thinking human to look down from a hill on to a crowded plain and not ponder over the relative importance of things. To take a simple view is to take a wider view. Whatever our beliefs, whatever our creeds from which we seek to extract happiness when we live on the plain, we find that things that have puzzled us are made clear when we stand on a hill. On a hill we are content to be content.
And so from the hills we return refreshed in body, in mind and in spirit, to grapple anew with life’s problems; for a while we have lived simply, wisely and happily; we have made good friends; we have adventured well.”
- Frank Smythe
“Ask yourself for one moment what your feelings have been on the eve of some act involving courage, whether it be physical courage, or moral or intellectual…what has happened to you? If it has really called forth courage, has it not felt something like this: I cannot do this. This is too much for me. I shall ruin myself if I take this risk. I cannot take the leap, it’s impossible. All of me will be gone if I do this, and I cling to myself.
And then supposing the Spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never had before. That there is more of you?…So it is throughout life…you know ‘nothing ventured nothing won’ is true in every hour, it is the fibre of every experience that signs itself into the memory.”
- J.N. Figgis
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