Climbing Quotes
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I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
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More Climbing Quotes
The view we enjoyed from the summit [of Mount Rainier] could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below.
john muir— "Washington and the Puget Sound" in Picturesque California (1888-1890); reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 20
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
robert frost— "Birches" (1920)
I plucked a honeysuckle where The hedge on high is quick with thorn, And climbing for the prize, was torn, And fouled my feet in quag-water; And by the thorns and by the wind The blossom that I took was thinn'd, And yet I found it sweet and fair.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti— Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Honeysuckle; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 372.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
robert frost— 'Birches' (1916)
Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
Christopher Marlowe— 1587 Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 2, sc.7.
They were always?getting more credit than they deserved, more sorrow than they could bear, climbing into jobs before they were ready and failing just when they were succeeding.
— 1991 Of John F, Robert F and Edward M Kennedy. Deadline.
Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?
Percy Bysshe Shelley— 'To the Moon' (published1824).
You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave — now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks — tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.
william jennings bryan— "The Law and the Gospel".
Tenderly Kala nursed her little waif, wondering silently why it did not gain strength and agility as did the little apes of other mothers. It was nearly a year from the time the little fellow came into her possession before he would walk alone, and as for climbing — my, but how stupid he was!
Edgar Rice Burroughs— Ch. 5 : The White Ape
(I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.. .. rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.
marsden hartley— letter to Horace Traubel around 1908, as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 18
I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness.
william shockley— Memo to himself in 1947, regarding work on the transistor, as quoted in Broken Genius : The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age (2006) by Joel N. Shurkin, Ch. 7, p. 125
The window-lights, myriads and myriads,Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.
sara teasdale— Evening: New York
Sometimes, that mountain you've been climbing, is just a grain of sand.
carrie underwood— From her hit single, So Small from the album, Carnival Ride (2007).
As a four-year-old, my mother told me I was climbing the fence, jumping off and calling myself an 'eppyplane' ... I bought books on aeroplanes, I followed everything in the newspapers about aeroplanes. Amy Johnson flew to Australia in 1930 - why couldn't I do something like that?
nancy bird walton— Nancy Bird Walton in an interview with George Negus on George Negus Tonight, 8 March 2004
What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.
lord byron— Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 218.
Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.
james berardinelli— Review of Titanic (1997)
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
stephen covey— p. 101 (The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (1989))
Celebrate we will Because life is short But sweet for certain We're climbing two by two To be sure these days continue.
dave matthews— Two Step
Man's books are but a climbing stair, Lain step by step, like stairs of stone; The stairway here, the temple there Man's lampad honor, and his trust, The God who called him from the dust.
joaquin miller— "The Larger College".
Sit down in climbing, and hear the pines sing.
john muir— page 428 (Stickeen (1909))
A Path to Equality. - A few hours of mountain climbing turn a rascal and a saint into two pretty similar creatures. Fatigue is the shortest way to Equality and Fraternity--and, in the end, Liberty will surrender to Sleep.
friedrich nietzsche— II.263. (Human, All Too Human (1878))
There are the breezes of early morning; for the sun on emerging from beneath the earth strikes humid air as he returns, and as he goes climbing up the sky he spreads it out before him, extracting breezes from the vapor that was there before the dawn.
vitruvius— Chapter VI, Sec. 11
The lark now leaves his watery nest, And climbing, shakes his dewy wings. He takes your window for the East And to implore your light he sings.
— Sir William Davenant, The Lark now Leaves his Watery Nest.
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste: For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
— Act IV, scene 3, line 339.
There are the breezes of early morning; for the sun on emerging from beneath the earth strikes humid air as he returns, and as he goes climbing up the sky he spreads it out before him, extracting breezes from the vapor that was there before the dawn.
— Chapter VI, Sec. 11 (Book I)
A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity - and sleep finally adds to them liberty.
friedrich nietzsche— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1996), p. 373 (translation by R. J. Hollingdale).
I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.
terry pratchett— Terry Pratchett, The Herald, (interview), October 4th, 2004
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
— Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), line 200; Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 241-42.
