Climbing Quotes

“Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don’t dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“When life brings you mountains, you don’t waste your time asking why; you spend your time climbing over them.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

“Are you too frightened to go any farther?" asked the silk-monkey, who found all this very easy, having four legs herself.
"I'm never afraid," answered Sniff. "But I think the view is better from here.”
― Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland

“What distinguishes that summit above the earthly line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know the path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire (HENRY DAVID THOREAU, JOURNAL)”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“To be a climber one has to accept that gratification is rarely immediate.”
― Bernadette McDonald

“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, Ringworld

“I climb the door instead of a tree
Just to crawl with myself walking free
What if I’m a lizard beneath my skin
Changing my colours of the human I’ve been”
― Munia Khan

“To get over a mountain, you have to climb it.”
― Jonathan Tesch

“Static people don’t fall! You fell because you were either climbing, or running. This is a sign that you are on track. Don’t stop where you fall; rise up and do it again!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“Leaders don't climb hills of success with shoes of pride. They are slippery enough to bring a person down to the valley.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“You should fall because you fail to do the move, not because you fail to try the move.”
― Andy Kirkpatrick, 1000+ Climbing Tips

“To see what others can not...
You must climb the mountain”
― Ron Akers

“We can only climb the mountains because there’s a valley that makes the mountain a mountain.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The rope connecting two men on a mountain is more than nylon protection; it is an organic thing that transmits subtle messages of intent and disposition from man to man; it is an extension of the tactile senses, a psychological bond, a wire along which currents of communication flow.”
― Trevanian, The Eiger Sanction

“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, The White Spider: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger

“climbing a mountain represents a chance to be briefly free oneself of the small concerns of our common lives, to strip off nonessentials, to come down to the core of life itself. Food, shelter,, and friends - these are the essentials, these plus faith and purpose and a deep and unrelenting determination.”
― Mateo Cabello, Of Mountains and Men

“Climbing, simply and joyfully, is the way I love the world.”
― Steph Davis, High Infatuation: A Climber's Guide to Love and Gravity

“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

“Looking out of a tent door into a world of snow and vanishing hopes. ~George Mallory”
― Conrad Anker, The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mt. Everest

“The length of the fall is dictated by how far we had climbed. The outcome of the fall is dictated by whether we’re holding on to that which we’re climbing, or we’re letting God hold onto us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Choosing the wrong way makes us feel different and ensured you to take right decision”
― Nitesh Nishad

“Feel yourself climbing the mountain.”
― A.D. Posey

“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

“Let us grant courage and the love of pure adventure their own justification, even if we cannot produce any material support for them. Mankind has developed an ugly habit of only allowing true courage to the killers. Great credits accrue to the one who bests another; little is given to the man who recognises in his comrade on the rope a part of himself, who for long hours of extreme peril faces no opponent to be shot or struck down, but whose battle is solely against his own weakness and insufficiency. Is the man who, at moments when his own life is in the balance, has not only to safeguard it but, at the same time, his friend's- even to the extent of mutual self-sacrifice- to receive less recognition than a boxer n the ring, simply because the nature of what he is doing is not properly understood? In his book about the Dachstein, Kurt Maix writes: "Climbing is th emost royl irrationality out of which Man, in his creative imagination, has been able to fashion the highest personal values." Those personal values, which we gain from our approach to the mountains, are great enough to enrich our life. Is not the irrationality of its very lack of purpose the deepest argument for climbing? But we had better leave philosophical niceties and unsuitable psychoanalisis out of this.”
― Heinrich Harrer, The White Spider: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger

“A healthy person that uses medical oxygen to perform their job on a daily basis should expect to eventually become a sick person.”
― Steven Magee, Health Forensics

“Keep climbing; your fruits are on the top!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Become a Better You

“You ought to find all your might, to climb a higher height.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“Lead the way. Just remember that I'm not a very good climber."

"Not very good?" Beetledown laughed. "Like a dog with one leg, to put truth to it.”
― Tad Williams, Shadowheart