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.
Asthe climbing up a sandy way isto the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man.
Bible (Apocrypha)— Ecclesiasticus 25:20.
Doing time is like climbing a mountain wearing roller skates.
john dean— 1977 On conviction after the Watergate scandal. In Newsweek, 4 Jul.
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)
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 think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.
edmund hillary— As quoted in The Age (25 May 2006)
On a trip to Germany, Lange and his entourage were climbing the tower of an ancient castle when they stopped to catch their breath. "How old is this ruin?" someone asked a guide. "Forty-two years," said Lange.
david lange— Source: A New Zealand Dictionary of Political Quotations, p. 94.
After that I was infused with a pleasant sense of abandon. Our rope was not long enough for us to abseil down the red step, and the idea of climbing down it without support from above was not to be contemplated; therefore we just had to reach the summit.
eric shipton— Eric Shipton (1977). That Untravelled World. Illustrations by Biro (2nd edition ed.). London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-21609-3.
— Shipton was climbing with the novice Bill Tillman on the first ascent of the difficult West Ridge Route up Batian.
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
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))
My rhyming skills got you climbing hills, I'll travel through your mind into your spine like siren drills.
eminem— "Infinite" (Infinite (1996))
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
Franz Kafka— 18; (9 November 1917) a slight variant of this was published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946): If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.
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
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.
The pretty Lark, climbing the Welkin cleer, Chaunts with a cheer, Heer peer I neer my Deer; Then stooping thence (seeming her fall to rew) Adieu (she saith) adieu, deer Deer, adieu.
guillaume de salluste du bartas— Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Weekes and Workes, Fifth Day.
When you reach the top of the mountain, keep climbing.
— Quoted as a Zen koan in Kevin Grange, "Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World" (2011), p.284
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 (1947) in memo to himself, 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
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.
When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.
edmund hillary— Article in "The Guardian" from March 13, 2003
