Alfred Wainwright Quotes

United Kingdom, Author
January 17, 1907 – January, 20, 1991.

Alfred Wainwright ("A.W.") MBE was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the English Lake District. Among his 40-odd other books is the first guide to the Coast to Coast Walk, a 192-mile long-distance footpath devised by Wainwright which remains popular today.

Also known as Illustrator

Clouds are the most transient of nature's creations. They come out of a clear sky, disintegrate before your eyes, vanish. You never see the same cloud twice. Every moment of its brief existence brings a change, a change of form or tint or texture; but its beauty remains constant to the end. The beauty of the clouds is there for us to see every day, if we are not too busy to look up....

Alfred Wainwright
- Change
- Beauty
- Clouds
The precious moments of life are too rare, too valuable to be forgotten when they have passed; we should hoard them as a miser hoards his gold, and bring them to light and rejoice over them often. We should all of us have a treasury of happy memories to sustain us when life is unbearably cruel, to brighten the gloom a little, to be stars shining through the darkness.

Alfred Wainwright
- Life
- Moments
- Memories

An objective is an ambition, and life without ambition is ... well, aimless wandering.

Alfred Wainwright
The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.

Alfred Wainwright
- Life
- Hills
- Hour
There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

Alfred Wainwright
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
You were made to soar, to crash to earth, then to rise and soar again.

Alfred Wainwright
- Made
- Rise
- Soar
There is much quiet joy in writing: there is exercise for the imagination, escape from the shackled body, solace for the troubled mind.

Alfred Wainwright

One can forget even a raging toothache on Haystacks.

Alfred Wainwright
Morning is the best part of the day for walking. The air is freshest then, the earth sweetest. The flowers preen themselves after their bath of dew, and stand erect with rare self-assurance, proud of their bright clean colours. The birds are happiest in the morning, and most lively then. They dart across the path before you, wheel and soar above the trees, swoop unerringly to their nests. They chatter and chirrup and sing in unending chorus, blithely contented and gay, and so very very glad to be alive.

Alfred Wainwright
- Morning
- Best
- Part