Mountain Climbing Quotes

The greatest cause of ulcers is mountain-climbing over molehills. ~ Maxwell Maltz

Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier's. ~ Lee Child

Finally, the tern 'asceticism' is also susceptible to being misunderstood by those who view Buddhism from the outside. Evola reminds his readers that the original meaning of the term asceticism is "practical exercise," or 'discipline' - one could even say 'learning.' It certainly does not mean, as some are inclined to think, a willingness to mortify the body that derives from the idea of penance, and even leads to the practice of self-flagellation, since it is believed that one must suffer in order to expiate one's sins. Asceticism is rather a school of the will, a pure heroism (that is, it is disinterested) that Evola, a real expert in this subject, compares to the efforts of a mountain climber. To the layman, mountain climbing may be a pointless effort, but to the climber it is a challenge in which the test of courage, perseverance, and hero-ism is its only purpose. In this we recognize an attitude that Brahmanism knew under certain forms of yoga and Tantrism.

In the spiritual domain, the procedure is the same. Buddha, as we know, was tempted early in his life by a form of asceticism that was similar to that of a hermit living in the desert. This approach involved prolonged fasts and techniques aimed at breaking the body's resistance. Siddhartha, however, realized himself and achieved the Awakening only when he understood this type of asceticism to be a dead end. Turning away from the indignant protests of his early companions, he stopped mortifying his body, ~ Jean Varenne

As de Saussure said, risk-taking brings with it its own reward: it keeps a "continual agitation alive" in the heart. Hope, fear. Hope, fear - this is the fundamental rhythm of mountaineering. Life, it frequently seems in the mountains, is more intensely lived the closer one gets to its extinction: we never feel so alive as when we have nearly died. ~ Robert Macfarlane

I find that rock climbing is the finest, most healthiest sport in the whole world. It is much healthier than most; look at baseball, where 10 000 sit on their ass to watch a handful of players ~ John Salathe

Life is brought down to the basics: if you are warm, regular, healthy, not thirsty or hungry, then you are not on a mountain ... Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall - it's great when you stop. ~ Chris Darwin

One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain climbing over molehills. ~ Earl Wilson

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

I have spent
or wasted
my life around motor racing: driving, promoting, and writing about what Ernest Hemingway once linked with mountain climbing and bull fighting as the only true sports. The rest, he sniffed, are merely games. ~ Brock Yates

I love to read about the exploits of technical mountain climbers, but I've never done any vertical climbing. ~ Will Hobbs

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.
And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience - a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Mountains were once my big adventure but is is over since a long time; I still dream from the wonderful days sometimes, read also a few pages from a mountain book. But the thought of doing again active mountain climbing has faded. ~ Fritz Zwicky

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now - that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. ~ Eckhart Tolle

But I would point out that there is another and still more important function of great mountains - the culture not of athletic faculty alone, but of that intellectual sympathy with untamed and primitive Nature which our civilization threatens to destroy. A mountain is something more than a thing to climb. To the many who, on a fine summer day, swarm up Skiddaw or Snowdon by the well-worn pony-paths, it is pure holiday-making; to the few who (in another sense) swarm up Scafell Pinnacel or the Napes needle, it is pure gymnastics; but between or beyond these two classes there are those - pilgrims I call them - who find mountain climbing what only mountains can give, the contact with unsophisticated Nature, the opportunity to be alone, to be out of and above the world of ordinary life, to pass from the familiar sights and surroundings into a cloudland of new shapes and sounds, where one feels the fascination of that undiscoverable secret (I do not know how else to name it) by which every true nature-lover is allured. ~ Henry Stephens Salt

Women often focus more on staying friends, which is as important as climbing the mountain. ~ Arlene Blum

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.

2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.

3. The master has a group of slave, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.

4. The master allows the slave four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.

5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.

6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what use to put wh ~ Robert Nozick

. . .There is nothing to complain of. . .we had a gorgeous day for the climb, almost windless and brilliantly fine, yet we were unable to get to the summit. So we have no excuse - we have been beaten in fair fight; beaten by the height of the mountain, and by our own shortness of breath. But the fight was worth it, worth it every time, and we shall cherish the privilege of defeat by the world's greatest mountain. ~ Howard Somervell

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. ~ Peter Matthiessen

Fear ... the right and necessary counterweights to that courage which urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction ~ Heinrich Harrer

Climbing has taught me many lessons, one of the most important being, just how ever-present death is. Having faced death a few times now while climbing, has made me realize that I have no fear of it. ~ Mekael Shane

You have to understand that you're not going to win by sitting in the president's office. You don't get a world of love and peace that way. You may get a little victory, but then you're going to have a bigger struggle ahead. It's like mountain climbing. You climb a peak, you think you're at the top--and then you notice there is a bigger peak right beyond it, and you've got to climb that one. That's what popular struggle is like. And that's lacking. Our quick-gratification culture is not conducive to that kind of commitment. ~ Noam Chomsky

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. ~ Jon Krakauer

Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better! ~ Ingrid Bergman

The negotiations were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal, something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing. ~ Richard Holbrooke

Trying to get with Six is like deciding to take up mountain climbing and choosing Everest as your first mountain ~ Pittacus Lore

I was born to live, in pursuit of the penultimate high.
I am guaranteed a Homeric death, when it's my time to die. ~ Mekael Shane

It's funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes.
The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature," he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up. ~ Mitch Albom

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread. ~ Maurice Herzog

If you ignore the mountain, doesn't mean mountain will ignore you too.. ~ Tanveer Mazhar

Mountain climbing was my original sport ... and I've never tired from the satisfaction of getting to the top of a mountain. ~ Steve Fossett

Pucky lads, a wee bit over their heads. ~ Doug Scott

If you're ever killed mountain climbing, then all that you've worked for is gone ~ Jim Whittaker

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. ~ Edna Ferber

In climbing you are always faced with new problems in which you must perform using intuitive movements, and then later analyze them to figure out why they work, and then learn from them. ~ Wolfgang Gullich

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. ~ D.T. Suzuki

If you want to climb it badly enough, you will. So ... why bother ? ~ Doug Scott

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news ~ John Muir

Mountain hikes instilled in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit or peak. ~ Paul D. Boyer

The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain - he is inspired by it. The persistent winner is not discouraged by a problem
he is challenged by it. Mountains are created to be conquered; adversities are designed to be defeated; problems are sent to be solved. It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills. ~ William Arthur Ward

One thing to remember on the Eiger, never look up, or you may need a plastic surgeon. ~ Don Whillans

The girl looks out the window, watching the gentle, familiar blue sky fade into darkness. The stars come out, slowly at first and then all together, diamond-bright, each one a new world to discover.
But no matter how long the girl looks, she feels nothing. Puzzled, she looks for the girl who wanted to be an explorer, the girl who wanted to learn deep-sea diving and mountain-climbing, the girl who wanted to travel the stars. But she can't find her. That girl died when her parents did, in a little shop in the slums of November. And now she has no soul left to shatter.
She closes the shade over the window. ~ Amie Kaufman

When he was preparing for a big fight, his trainer would take him mountain climbing to build up his hand strength and endurance. Max's favorite piece of advice? Don't look down until you reach the summit. Galen had asked why, thinking Max would give him some inspirational shit about the satisfaction of seeing how far he'd come at the end or something. Instead, Max had snorted, "Because it's fucking scary. ~ Christine Bell

Peculiar or not, it is my idea of pleasure. Why, why else do you lead this life you don't enjoy it? Don't talk of duty to me; you men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging yourselves. You go gallivanting over the earth, climbing mountains, looking for the sources of the Nile; and expect women to sit dully at home embroidering. I embroider very badly. I think I would excavate rather well. ~ Elizabeth Peters

I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity. ~ Rex Stout

I soon learned that Everest wasn't a private affair. It belonged to many men. ~ Tom Hornbein

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. ~ Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

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

Individuals with greed for power see others as elements to be oppressed. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The reason why rivers and seas are able to be lords over a hundred mountain streams, is that they know how to keep below them. That is why they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. ~ Laozi

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers. ~ Ellsworth Huntington

The poop became a poop mountain; the pee became a pee ocean. And then somehow a Poop and Pee Airline was invented to fly travelers to Poop Mountain and Pee Ocean, although the code name for the airline was Dolphin Airlines, to keep the unsuspecting from being tipped off. ~ Lauren Myracle

The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality. ~ Wilkie Collins

There are billions of barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf. There is even more in Alaska. There is enough oil shale in the Rocky Mountain West alone to power America for the next hundred years. The Democrats say all this American energy is off limits. ~ John Barrasso

The Guti were a band of mountain barbarians. It's always the way, isn't it? Everything is blamed on 'the barbarians ~ Stephen Fry

One of his hands slides over my stomach, tracing the shape of my skin. He kisses me again, and it's like falling off a cliff. Like a mountain slide, building momentum with every touch, until there is only destruction ahead.
I have never felt anything like this. ~ Holly Black

There is more genuine joy in climbing the hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting satisfaction. The morass of failure, if reached through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends. ~ B.C. Forbes

Mom said Dad was wasting his time, that nobody could talk Tyler out of anything once his mind was made up. 'You may as well take a broom and start sweeping dirt off the mountain,' she said. ~ Tara Westover

I shut the car door as quietly as possible and quickly maneuvered to the front porch, climbing the steps two at a time, and rushing to the door. I knocked. Loudly. Several times. And then I waited.

My heart was lodged in my throat so I tried to swallow past it. I couldn't show weakness. I needed to be tough.

I can be tough. I nodded, shifting from one foot to the other. I can be real tough. You can't be a sissy and make fifty loaves of bread in a day. That's a lot of kneading. I'm tough as nails. I'm basically the Rocky Balboa of bakers. I'm unstoppable! Aint nobody gunna -

The door swung open. I jumped back a half step. My voice failed me. ~ Penny Reid

How certain are you that this forest is Darken Wood, Raistin?"
"How certain is one of anything, Half-Elven?" the mage replied. "I am not certain of drawing my next breath. But go ahead. Walk into the wood that no living man has ever walked out. Death is life's one great certainty, Tanis."
The half-elf felt a sudden urge to throw Raistlin off the side of the mountain. ~ Margaret Weis

I love to sit on a mountain top and gaze. I don't think of anything but the people I care about and the view. ~ Julian Lennon

Was that not the way it ought to be? The beauty of Bruges lay in being dead. From the top of the belfry it appeared completely dead to Borluut. He did not want to go back down ever again. His love for the town was greater, was endless. From now on it was a kind of frenzy, his final sensual pleasure. Constantly climbing high above the world, he started to enjoy death. There is danger in rising too high, into the unbreathable air of the summits. Disdain for the world, for life itself brings its own punishment. ~ Georges Rodenbach

When greed is enthroned, be it in a community or nation, ungodliness is celebrated at the altar of human pleasure. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The dude feels right fatherly. Takes her down to the crick to wash the underground off of her. Just can't bring himself to shoot her while she's filthy and starving. There's time. Offers her a cake of French-milled soap he brought all the way out from Chicago. Smells like gardenias if you know your flowers, and the dude does. Snow White knows something's skewed but she grabs it, strips off like it's nothing and climbs in the water. She don't shiver even though that stream has to be as cold as a wagon tire. The miner's crud comes off her in black ribbons. The duded watches another girl come out of the blind mole-skin she was walking around it. This one has muscles like a mountain cat and a kind of pretty he doesn't know what to do with. For fairness he'd take her stepmother six days and twice on Sunday. The beauty Snow White's got has nothing to do with him. She's scarred up and suspicious an shameless. Her pretty's not for him. It's like saying the moon's got a fine figure on her. Maybe true, but what good is that to a man? ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Made a sketch later on the cabin verandah, but it was impossible to keep up with the changes. Oh the difficulties of mountain art for too little genius. ~ J. E. H. MacDonald

So much of the theatrical can leave you with a yearning for the real. The real is suddenly and starkly there right at the city's edge and extends for thousands of square miles of desert and mountain and canyon with which human beings can do almost nothing profitable other than to leave it be and just look at it. ~ Timothy O'Grady

Well, they should be glad, then, he said, that we did it, shouldn't they? That we stole Death's death from them, I mean, so that they could never have it, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much they wanted it. That was good for them, wasn't it? Aren't they lucky?
You're asking me? the Coyote said. He crawled out from his hidey-hole, lifted a hind leg to pass a few drops of water. Overhead Crows were calling Crows to feast, heading in numbers for the mountain at the end of Ymr.
Well I think they are, Dar Oakley said. And what have we ever got for it?
Stories, Coyote said. Not to tell you something you don't already know. We're made of stories now, brother. It's why we never die even if we do. ~ John Crowley

The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television? Anyhow, they killed most of the really great comedians. Because most of them were Jewish. In fact, she realized, they killed off most of the entertainment field. I wonder how Hope gets away with what he says. Of course, he has to broadcast from Canada. And it's a little freer up there. But Hope really says things. Like the joke about Goring . . . the one where Goring buys Rome and has it shipped to his mountain retreat and then set up again. And revives Christianity so his pet lions will have something to - ~ Philip K. Dick

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy. ~ James Russell Lowell

She did occasionally criticise my priorities, how could I buy three new LPs one Friday afternoon when I was walking around in shoes with the sole flapping off? They're just material goods, I responded, objects, while music was completely different. This was the mind, for Christ's sake. This is what we need, really, and I do mean really, and it's important to prioritise it. Everyone prioritises. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. Do you understand?
'Yes, you're probably right, in a way. But isn't it terribly impractical to walk around with your soles coming off? And it doesn't look very nice, either, does it.'
'What do you want me to do? I haven't got any money. I prioritised music on this occasion. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books. ~ John Muir

You must find a place on a woman's body and live there.
In the dark, the noise far away, Sam ran his hands over Calliope's body and the world of work and worry seemed to move away. He found two depressions at the bottom of her back where sunlight collected, and he lived there, out of the wind and noise. He grew old there, died and ascended to the Great Spirit, found heaven in her cheek on his chest, the warm wind of her breath across his stomach carried sweet grass and sage, and... In another lifetime he had lived on the soft skin under her right breast, his lips riding light over the ridge and valley of every rib, shuffling through downy, dew damp hairs like a child dancing through autumn leaves. In the mountain of her breast, he fasted at the medicine wheel of her aureole, received a vision that he and she were steam people, mingled wet with no skin seperating them. And there he lived, happy. She followed, traveled, lived with him and in him as he was in her. They lived lifetimes and slept and dreamed together. It was swell. ~ Christopher Moore

There may well be a scientific paper to be written on why walking in an art gallery is so much more exhausting than, say, climbing Helvellyn. My guess is that it is something to do with the energy required to hold muscles in tension, combined with the mental exertion of wondering what to say. ~ David Nicholls

I take Democrats to bed with me for lack of a dachshund, although as a matter of fact on occasions like this I am almost certain to be visited by the ghost of Fred, my dash-hound everlasting, dead these many years. In life, Fred always attended the sick, climbing right into bed with the patient like some lecherous old physician, and making a bad situation worse. ~ E.B. White

Because there's a silent, shrugging, stoical acceptance of all the things in the world we can never be part of: shorts, swimming pools, strappy dresses, country walks, roller-skating, ra-ra skirts, vest tops, high heels, rope climbing, sitting on a high stool, walking past building sites, flirting, being kissed, feeling confident. And ever losing weight, ever. The idea of suggesting we don't have to be fat –that things could change –is the most distant and alien prospect of all. We're fat now and we'll be fat forever and we must never, ever mention it, and that is the end of it. It's like Harry Potter's Sorting Hat. We were pulled from the hat marked 'Fat' and that is what we must now remain, until we die. Fat is our race. Our species. Our mode. As a result, there is very little of the outside world –and very little of the year –we can enjoy. Summer is sweaty under self-conscious layers. On stormy days, wind flattens skirts against thighs, and alarms both us and, we think, onlookers and passers-by. Winter is the only time we feel truly comfortable: covered head to toe in jumpers, coats, boots and hat. I develop a crush on Father Christmas. If I married him, not only would I be expected to stay fat, but I'd look thin standing next to him, in comparison. Perspective would be my friend. We all dream of moving to Norway, or Alaska, where we could wear massive padded coats all the time, and never reveal an inch of flesh. When it rains, we're happiest of all. Then we can just stay ~ Caitlin Moran

Whenever I see a mountain, I remember God is still alive! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

My altars are the mountains and the ocean. ~ Lord Byron

I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life, - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it; - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; - and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hothouse, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered from the shock of the tempest.'

'Granted; - but would you use the same argument with regard to a girl?'

'Certainly not.'

'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?'

'Assuredly not.'

'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be either that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded, that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may ~ Anne Bronte

Sometimes to find truth one must move mountains -Kohler ~ Dan Brown

Some hills are each only a few centimeters short of being a mountain. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master. ~ Neil Gaiman

They always tell us it's getting to the top that's hard. Climbing's the easy part. Sliding down the other side, that's the hard part. ~ Susan Dunlap

Have you reached the peak of the mountain?
Is it everything you'd hope it would be?
I think if we were trees we'd be willows and we'd let children swing on our branches.
I'm whispering into the air hoping you will hear me:
Your soul is my soul's home ~ Emery Allen

In any career, there is a moment when you are no longer need to be pushed up from below, but rather pulled up from above. Know when that moment comes and adjust your strategy accordingly. ~ Clifford Cohen

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

What separates man from divine Reality is the slightest of barriers: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far from God. The barrier is, for man, a mountain; he stands before a mountain which he must remove with his own hands. He digs away the earth, but in vain; the mountain remains. Man, however, goes on digging, in the name of God. And the mountain vanishes. It was never there. ~ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' about those? Try taking away the phantasm and the entire human
contribution, you sober realists! Yes, if only you could do that! If you could forget your heritage, your past, your training – your entire humanity and animality! For us there is no 'reality' – nor for you either, you sober ones. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm going to be climbing for my whole life. ~ Chris Sharma

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and
my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've
missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:
don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if
you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain
it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone ~ A.R. Ammons

Yes " Morrison said dryly. "I'm sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your Jame's Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren't, now I'm going to drum till you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don't argue with me. ~ C.E. Murphy

Be swift as the wind,
silent as the forest,
fierce as fire,
steady as a mountain. ~ David Kudler

I had the Big Horn river explored from Wind River mountain to my place of embarkation. ~ William Henry Ashley

Andrew closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the memories of that night as the rest of the world moved on around him. He realized that even after all this time he hadn't forgotten the smile she seemed to have patented, the light blue tank top she wore so well, or the way she had laughed when he accidentally spilled an entire can of Mountain Dew on the carpet she'd spent hours steam cleaning. And although he hadn't kissed Cooper McKay that night, or even held her hand, he could still remember the feeling of finding out that love at first sight did truly exist. ~ Joey Jones

And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me. ~ Isak Dinesen

We describe the decision-making time like being stuck at the top of a high mountain; there are two ways down, one was to jump off the steep side and the other was to roll down the rocky side. In both cases, we knew we might not be alive by the time we got to the bottom. There is no easy or less painful choice, really. - A dad ~ Stephanie Azri

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. ~ Albert Camus