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George Mallory Quotes

George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest, in the early 1920s.

During the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, disappeared on the north-east ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world's highest mountain. The pair were last seen when they were about 800 vertical feet from the summit.

Mallory's ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until his body was discovered on 1 May 1999 by an expedition that had set out to search for the climbers' remains. Whether Mallory and Irvine had reached the summit before they died remains a subject of speculation and continuing research. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. June 1886 – 9. June 1924
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George Mallory: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous George Mallory Quotes

“One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.”

George Mallory

Letter to his wife Ruth Mallory (1921), acquitted in Everest: The Mountaineering History‎ (2000) by Walt Unsworth, p. 47; also The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory (2001) by Peter Gillman and Leni Gillman, p. 13

“Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man.”

George Mallory

The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory (2001), p. 53

“Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.”

George Mallory

Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance (1921), Chapter XII: The Northern Approach, "The Reconnaissance of the Mountain", p. 186

“I look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door on to a dismal world of snow and vanishing hopes - & yet, & yet, & yet there have been a good many things to set the other side.”

George Mallory

Diary entry (27 May 1924), published in Kingdom of Adventure — Everest (2006) by L. V. Stewart Blacker, p. 124

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