Quotes about climb
page 3

“It was all practical stuff. Why? Because that's the way you train soldiers: practical stuff. Soldiers don't freaking need to do a flag, you don't need to do handstands. You need to run and sprint and vault over obstacles. They need to balance on stuff, and they need to climb to crawl to lift and carry, throw and catch. They need to do all these things. They need to fight, to swim.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Julie Angel (2016). Breaking the Jump: The Secret Story of Parkour's High-Flying Rebellion, Arum Press.

Way, Fight, Training

“1963 is when prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the American school system. Anybody remember that? Madalyn Murray O’Hair? Her son, by the way, became a preacher. His mom used him to get prayer taken out. But in 1963, sexually transmitted diseases began to climb. This is for kids 10 to 14 years of age. 1963 is when divorce rates began to go up. By the way, premarital sex and divorce go hand and hand. If you don’t trust 'em before you’re married, you won’t trust 'em after you’re married. 1963 is when violent crimes began to increase. There’s been nearly a 1000% increase in violent crimes. 1963 is when unwed birthrates began to incline. 100% increase for girls 10 to 14. By the way, pregnancies have increased 553%. SAT scores have dropped off incredibly since 1963. 1963 is when we saw an incredible rise of married couples living together in adultery. Teen suicide rate has gone crazy.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Age, Disease, School, Sex

“While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed… it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

Foreword to Peak Performance : Business Lessons from the World's Top Sports Organizations (2000) by Clive Gibson, Mike Pratt, Kevin Roberts and Ed Weymes.

World

“For me, one of the most empowering outcomes of my year of climbing has been the new narrative I can tell about myself. I am no longer “Adrianne: scholar, book lover, pianist, and Wikipedian”. I am now “Adrianne: scholar, book lover, pianist, Wikipedian, and rock climber”.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wadewitz, Adrianne. (August 12, 2013). "What I learned as the worst student in the class" http://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/08/12/what-i-learned-worst-student-class. HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance Collaboratory. &mdash; reprinted and cited in: "How Adrianne Wadewitz learnt to embrace failure" http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-adrianne-wadewitz-learnt-to-embrace-failure-20140425-zqzgx.html. The Sydney Morning Herald. April 25, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014. &mdash; and also cited in: Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times.

Books, Lovers

“And in the lonely cool before dawn,
You hear their engines roaring on.
But when you get to the porch they're gone on the wind.
So Mary climb in.
It's a town full of losers,
And I'm pulling out of here to win.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Thunder Road"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

“Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Clear After Rain" (雨晴), as translated by Kenneth Rexroth in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1971), p. 16

Mountain, Business, Autumn, Tree

“Your body will never be more connected to your mind than when something is at stake. That's how you measure the value of a movement: by its consequences. Climb a tree, throw a rock, balance on the edge of a cliff-- you lose focus for a fraction of a second, you're screwed. It takes a very affluent and indulged culture to convince itself that standing around in weird poses is exercise.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Christopher McDougall (2015). Natural Born Heroes: How A Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance, Vintage.

Exercises, Tree

“It's not a hill it's a mountain, as you start out the climb”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)

Mountain

“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 (1837–1913) American judge

"The Larger College".
In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890)

God, Books

“Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital… Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls' College alone. You hear nothing but rape.
get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p. m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!”

John Rabe (1882–1950) German businessman

17 December 1937

Life, Women, Way, Girl

“Climbing up on Solsbury Hill,
I could see the city light.
Wind was blowing, time stood still.
Eagle flew out of the night.
He was something to observe.
Came in close, I heard a voice.
Standing stretching every nerve,
Had to listen had no choice.
I did not believe the information.
I just had to trust imagination.
My heart going boom boom boom.
"Son," he said, "Grab your things, I've come to take you home."”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Solsbury Hill
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (I) (1977)

Home, Imagination, Light, Time

““Yes, maybe it’s just one colossal big joke with no point to it.” Lazarus stood up and stretched and scratched his ribs. “But I can tell you this, Andy, whatever the answers are, here’s one monkey that’s going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.””

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“Methuselah’s Children” Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 667; closing words
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Tree

“When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face,
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space.
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me.
Let me tell you now.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Up on the Roof (1962), co-written with Gerry Goffin, performed by The Drifters
Song lyrics, Singles

People, World, Peace, Way

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Poem written in a glass window obvious to the Queen's eye, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write, 'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all'", Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol. i. p. 419.

Fear

“No matter how hard you climb, there are always the rich above you, who got there without effort. Lucky stiffs, holding you down, making you discontent so you buy more of the crap advertised on television.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Effort

“We were all in awe of Penny [Woolcock]. You feel so safe with her, you end up doing things that might seem offensive to other people. It's almost like being in a therapy session. You go a little bit further than you would normally. But in the orgy scene, where Marc's really getting a blowjob, I was like, `You've crossed the line!' Me and Alec were acting, and being loving and safe and showing the feeling of wanting to climb under someone's skin. For it to suddenly become something purely physical - I didn't think that needed to be real. But it was a situation that got out of hand. They filmed it at a swingers' club. There wasn't any way of stopping things, once they'd started. It's really gruesome and awful. But for the story, it's perfect. That scene was out of control. But by that point, so are the characters.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

FILM: Beauty and the Beasts Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040312/ai_n12769890/pg_1. The London Independent. March 12, 2004. Guillory speaks about Sorted and director Penny Woolcock.

Love, People, Way, Feeling

“And the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been, and that would not be, that should be and were not, because he was dead. Shot dead on the road, in the wind, at twenty-one. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Eye of the Heron

Source: The Eye of the Heron (1978), Chapter 10 (p. 151)

Mountain, Light, Dead

“It’s important to understand how we got where we are today. In 1966, the unthinkable happened: a madman climbed the University of Texas clock tower and opened fire, killing more than a dozen people. It was the first mass shooting in the age of television, and it left a real impression on the country. It was the kind of terror we didn’t expect to ever see again. But around 30 years ago, we started to see an uptick in these types of shootings, and over the last decade they’ve become the new norm.
In July 2012, a gunman walked into a darkened theater in Aurora and shot 12 people to death, injuring 70 more. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. The sudden and utterly random violence was a terrifying sign of what was to come.
In December 2012, a young man entered an elementary school in Newtown and murdered six educators and 20 young children. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. Watching the aftermath of these young babies being gunned down was heartrending.
In June 2016, a gunman entered a nightclub in Orlando and sprayed revelers with gunfire. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds, many in close proximity, and killed 49. Many of the victims were shot in the head at close range. One of his weapons was an assault rifle.
Last month, a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas, turning an evening of music into a killing field. All told, the shooter used multiple assault rifles fitted with bump-fire stocks to kill 58 people. The concert venue looked like a warzone.
Over the weekend in Sutherland Springs, 26 were killed by a gunman with an assault rifle. The dead ranged from 17 months old to 77 years. No one is spared with these weapons of war. When so many rounds are fired so quickly, no one is spared. Another community devastated and dozens of families left to pick up the pieces.
These are just a few of the many communities we talk about in hushed tones—San Bernardino, Littleton, Aurora, towns and cities across the country that have been permanently scarred.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

Death, War, Children, People

“We are at that one of life's hours (it strikes for every man) when truth imposes itself, by itself, with irresistible obviousness, when each of us has only to stretch forth his arms to reach at a single bound the surface of shadows, even the sunlight of God. Then is human prudence but a snare and a delusion. Sanctity!' cried out the old priest in a deep voice; 'by saying this word in your presence and for you alone, I know the hurt I inflict upon you! You are not unaware of what sanctity is: a vocation, a calling. Up to the place where God awaits you you will have to climb—climb, or be lost. Expect no human help.”

Georges Bernanos book Under the Sun of Satan

Source: Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan), 1926, pp.101-102, Fr. Menou-Segrais to the young Fr. Donissan

Life, God, Truth, Help

“While upon the subject of plants I may here mention a few of the more striking vegetable productions of Borneo. The wonderful Pitcher-plants, forming the genus Nepenthes of botanists, here reach their greatest development. Every mountain-top abounds with them, running along the ground, or climbing over shrubs and stunted trees; their elegant pitchers hanging in every direction. Some of these are long and slender, resembling in form the beautiful Philippine lace-sponge (Euplectella), which has now become so common; others are broad and short. Their colours are green, variously tinted and mottled with red or purple. The finest yet known were obtained on the summit of Kini-balou, in North-west Borneo. One of the broad sort, Nepenthes rajah, will hold two quarts of water in its pitcher. Another, Nepenthes Edwardsiania, has a narrow pitcher twenty inches long; while the plant itself grows to a length of twenty feet.”

Alfred Russel Wallace book The Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Beauty, Mountain, Tree, Water

“From behind the snow-capped mountains, hidden under the veil of brume, the sun prepared to rise. It took time to climb those lofty peaks with precipitous gradients. In the valley below lay a sleepy little town.”

Surendra Pratap Singh (1948–1997) Indian journalist

Parrot Under the Pine Tree

Mountain, Time, Sun

“Early Saturday morning I climbed the hills facing Kfar Gil'adi. Wonderful scenery. And in the brilliance of the beautiful morning I understood why Moses received the Torah on a mountain top. Only in the mountains is it possible to receive orders from above, when one sees how small is man yet feels secure in the nearness of God. From there one's horizons broaden in every respect, and the order of things becomes more understandable. In the mountains one can believe - and must believe. In the mountains one involuntarily hears the query: "Whom shall I send?" And the answer, "Send me to serve the beautiful and good!"”

Hannah Senesh (1921–1944) Jewish poet and anti-nazi fighter in World War II

Will I succeed? Will I be able to fulfil God's command?
SENESH, Hannah, DAFNE, Reuven; PALGI, Yoel; SENESH, Catherine. Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary. London : Sphere, 1973. p. 92.

God, Beauty, Feeling, Mountain

“Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Fear, Dogs, Imagination

“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 (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Two Step
Crash (1996)

Life

“Climb the steep Cold Mountain way
Roads to Cold Mountain are many and never ending
The valleys are long and deep, the peaks piled high
The streams are wide, the grass is thick
The moss is slippery though there is no rain
The pines sigh though there is no wind
Who can escape the snares of the world
And come to sit with me among the white clouds?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World, Way, Mountain, Grass

“There's a city, draped in net
Fisherman net
And in the half light, in the half light
It looks like every tower
Is covered in webs
Moving and glistening and rocking
It's babies in rhythm
As the spider of time is climbing
Over the ruins.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Light, Time, Baby

“Credibility lasts about two cycles of bad material, and then you’ll probably never get it back. If you let people down, that’s really hard to come back from– harder than climbing from nothing to something, even.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Pitchfork http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7926-louis-ck/

People

“Dawn was definitely pulling into the station by now, and the snow had begun to throb with an electric, new-fallen whiteness. It climbed the inside of my trousers, and clung, squeakily, to the soles of my boots, and the bit just in front seemed to say ‘don’t walk on me, please don’t walk... oh.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

“The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects—in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life

Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 52

Secret, Mountain, Sense, Animals

“While he was climbing the litter-strewn steps his left ball gave a sharp twinge, on and off like a light-switch, then again after he had sat down. Nothing. Just one of the aches and pains that come and go. No significance.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

Pain, Light

“Can't see nothin' in front of me;
Can't see nothin' coming up behind.
I make my way through this darkness;
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me.
Lost track of how far I've gone,
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed.
On my back's a sixty pound stone,
On my shoulder a half mile line.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The Rising"
Song lyrics, The Rising (2002)

Way, Feeling

“At one time in my life I used to look out of my bedroom window and see in the distance that stupendous mountain pile, Kinchengunga, one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas. It looked so close, almost as if a day's walking would bring me to its foot but I knew that it would take at least twelve weeks hard trekking to get an able bodied climber there, and then there would be the terrific climb to its summit — a feat seldom accomplished. So it is with knowledge. That which is worth having is seldom of easy attainment and in itself only constitutes a foundation for more knowledge.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter II, Part 1

Life, Mountain, Knowledge, Time

“You know, when you're young, God sweeps you up. He holds you there. The real snag is to stay there and to know how to fall. All those days when you can't hold on any longer. When you tumble. The test is being able to climb up again.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

God

“We are here in life for but one reason-to learn to climb through ascensions of consciousness into the true Selfhood which is within us-the Selfhood which belongs to the eternal, the Selfhood which is our real nativity, our home in God's spirit.”

Flower A. Newhouse (1909–1994) American mystic

The Armor of the Spiritual Life, 1948
Mysticism

Life, God, Home, Learning

“Take a look at the simplest of objects. Let's take, for example, an old chair. It seems like nothing. But think of the universe comprised within it: the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains. The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighbourhood. Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chair carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

describing a children's game in his essay, Tàpies suggests looking at a chair
1945 - 1970
Source: 'El joc de saber mirar' ('The Game of Knowing How to Look'), Antoni Tàpies, Cavall Fort, núm 82, Barcelona, gener de 1967 - translated from Catalan; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC )p. 16, note 9

Love, Life, Pain, Mountain

“How many wicked intentions climb aboard a pure and innocent phrase, after it is already on its way! It is enough to make one suspect that lying is, many a time, as involuntary as breathing.”

Machado de Assis book Dom Casmurro

Quantas intenções viciosas há assim que embarcam, a meio caminho, numa frase inocente e pura! Chega a fazer suspeitar que a mentira é muita vez tão involuntária como a transpiração.
Source: Dom Casmurro (1899), Ch. 41, p. 100.

Way, Lying, Time

“Far away like frightened birds, the echo of our feet floated through the upper floors. We climbed three flights of stairs and proceeded the length of another hall. At the end was a door. The Negro opened it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Bird

“Two men dressed in white jeans with white caps on their heads.... climbing over a large sign of white letters. Of course, the words spell something, but that is unimportant. What is important is their white, and the white of the letters.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951

Men

“I will face this challenge with the same energy and determination I've relied on to climb every hill and overcome every obstacle that I've faced in my life.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Full Remarks: Governor Larry Hogan Announces Cancer Diagnosis http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/06/22/full-remarks-governor-larry-hogan-announces-cancer-diagnosis/"(22 June 2015)

Life

“I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull;—and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

Brothers, st. 3.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Law, Spring, Nature, Evil

“Who is it climbs the summit of the road?
Only the beggar bumming his dark load.
Who was it cried to see the falling star?
Only the landless soldier lost in war.
And did a thousand years go by in vain?
And does another thousand start again?”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"The Mahratta Ghats", line 22; p. 44.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

War, Star

“Fetisov for the Devils plays it cross-ice, into the far corner. Matteau swoops in to intercept. Matteau behind the net, swings it in front. He scores! Matteau! Matteau! Matteau! Stephane Matteau! and the Rangers have one more hill to climb, baby, and it's Mount Vancouver! The Rangers are headed to the Finals!”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

Calling Stephane Matteau's game-winning goal in the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals)
1994

Baby

“Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.”

Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) American historian and biographer

Los Angeles Times Home Magazine (Feb. 20, 1977)

Mountain, Cooking

“So to sleep on the sleeping porch required preparation. First, you put on long underwear, pajamas, jeans, a sweatshirt, your grandfather’s old cardigan and bathrobe, two pairs of woolen socks on your feet and another on your hands, and a hat with earflaps tied beneath the chin. Then you climbed into bed and were immediately covered with a dozen bed blankets, three horse blankets, all the household overcoats, a canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I’m not sure that they didn’t lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to hold everything down. It was like sleeping under a dead horse. For the first minute or so it was unimaginably cold, shockingly cold, but gradually your body heat seeped in and you became warm and happy in a way you would not have believed possible only a minute or two before. It was bliss. Or at least it was until you moved a muscle. The warmth, you discovered, extended only to the edge of your skin and not a micron farther. There wasn’t any possibility of shifting positions. If you so much as flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 140

Way, Sleep, Horse, Dead

“Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Family, Understanding

“I'm not logical. I'm infected with the romantic fever. It began in my teens when I read Baudelaire in secret, in a country boarding school in England from which I slipped away by climbing over the wall. I was fifteen, the same age as Juliet--a Juliet for whom Romeo had no attraction.”

Renée Vivien (1877–1909) British poet who wrote in the French language

Quoted in Mercure de France, I-XII (1953), trans. Jeannette H. Foster (1977)

Secret, Age, School, Reading

“She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Life, Freedom

“In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. I began to break away from Communism and to climb from deep within its underground, where for six years I had been buried, back into the world of free men.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 25

Men, World, Communication

“Some day I’m going to climb Everest.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

Statement to a friend just before World War II.
Sir Edmund Hillary : King Of The World

“Hereby I send you back the 'Winter' [a painting]. I hope you will be better satisfied now. After alternately smashing away and adding on the cart some new figures, finally this one climbed up, which I hope will do better than its predecessors..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Hierbij zend ik je den winter [een schilderij] terug. Ik hoop dat je nu beter tevreden zult zijn. Na er eenige figuurtjes beurtelings op en van de wagen zijn gesmeten is er eindelijk deze opgeklommen die hoop ik beter zijn werk zal doen dan zijn voorganger..
Quote in a letter to Goupil in The Hague; as cited by R. Tervaert & C. Stolwijk, in ‘’De fabriek: Anton Mauve en zijn handelaren’’, 2009, p. 139
art-seller Goupil in The Hague wanted to buy this painting but demanded some additions first, to make it more marketable, it was too 'empty'
undated quotes

Hope, Winter, Painting

“I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can't climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building. I know guys who can run marathons but can't sprint to anyone's rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can't dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

A Wild Workout for the Real World, Men'sHealth http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/fitness-to-survive-in-the-wild_r=0

Men, Shoe, Guy, Time

“Climbing the bole of the tree, a man clings with all his arms and legs, and lays hold of every knob and sliver. When he mounts amongst the branches, it should be with a more easy alacrity. A man will often be apt at the one operation, yet awkward at the other. Nor is it, indeed, common to meet with a man of such a character as can be carried from a low condition of life through successive ascents, with an aptitude for every condition into which he passes; and thus it is that men who rise well will often stand infirmly. But for want of due consideration being given to the nature of men and circumstances, it is a usual thing to hear, not only regret but surprise expressed, when a man who has attained an elevated position in life exhibits in that position those very defects of character through which he is there.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 14. p. 91

Life, Men, Nature, Tree

“There is no permanent equilibrium in human affairs. Faith, wisdom, and art allow one to attain it for a time; then outside influences and the souls' passions destroy it, and one must climb the rock again in he same manner. This vacillation round a fixed point is life, and the certainty that such a point exists is happiness. As the most ardent love, of one analyses its separate moments, is made up of innumerable minute conflicts settled invariably by fidelity, so happiness, if one reduces it to its important elements, is made up of struggles and anguish, and always saved by hope.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Love, Life, Wisdom, Faith

“The sun along the mountain bows,
the Yellow River seawards flows.
You will enjoy a grander sight
by climbing to a greater height.”

Wang Zhihuan (688–742) Chinese poet

"On the Stork Tower" (《登鹳雀楼》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

Mountain, Sun

“To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the mediaeval knights who travelled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then… I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Women, Men, Hate, Travel

“I'm happy in the every day Way
Among the mist and vines and caves
The wilderness is boundless
My companions are lazy white clouds
There are roads but they do not reach the world
My mind has come to rest and nothing can stir my thought
On a bed of rock I sit alone in the night
While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World, Way, Mountain, Night

“In the last few months, surrounding myself with true friends and their positive energy, I am unfolding, emerging renewed. Climbing, I touch rock and feel the rush of infatuation. In a way, it feels like being reborn. I will always push hard. At times, I will be caught by inspiration, and when that happens I will never give up. That's who I am. But what I know now is that climbing is more than that. I'm more than that. So much has happened, but in some ways nothing has changed. Climbing, simply and joyfully, is the way I love the world.”

Steph Davis (1973) American rock climber

High Infatuation: A Climber's Guide to Love and Gravity (2007)

Love, World, Way, Feeling

“My rhyming skills got you climbing hills, I'll travel through your mind into your spine like siren drills.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Infinite"
1990s, Infinite (1996)

Travel

“Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes.
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns.”

Dylan Thomas Fern Hill

St. 1
Fern Hill (1946)

Grass, Time, Housing, Night

“My brother and I have, after many years, achieved our importance to each other as a difference. Because it is sometimes difficult for my brother to climb the steps to my apartment, he will often come by and we will sit in his car and talk. We quite enjoy one another’s company. My brother is no less a good man for not believing in God; and I am no better a man because I believe. It is simply that religion gives me a sense—no, not a sense, a reason, no, not exactly a reason, an understanding—that everyone matters.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

God, Religion, Cars, Understanding

“You were playing in the snow
You were banging on the doors
You climbed up on the roof
Roof of the world
You were pulling up the rhododendrons
Loping down the mountain They want to know you
They will hunt you down
Then they will kill you
Run away, run away… We found your footprints in the snow
We brushed them all away… You're the wild man.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

World, Mountain

“Now I climb the steps to freedom,
The open gates, I can see them.
Hands once I knew
Beckoning me through,
As the sunlight touch my face,
I can feel the warm embrace;
Arms surround me,
My life has found me…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Life, Feeling, Freedom

“Like an adventure who was asked why he climbed the mountain and answered, “Because it's there!” I think our culture has developed this intense love-hate relationship with risk, in part because it's always there.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 48

Love, Hate, Mountain, Thinking

“There's something in my eye. Bloodshot in disguise. God knows I really tried. Making the big time. Aiming to climb high.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Something In My Eye

God, Time

“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Quoted in "The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age" by Richard C. Duncan http://dieoff.org/page125.htm Originally from Fred Hoyle, Of Men and Galaxies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).

Intelligence, Sense

“Chesterton was important — as important to me in his way as C. S. Lewis had been.
You see, while I loved Tolkien and while I wished to have written his book, I had no desire at all to write like him. Tolkien’s words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

"Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004) http://www.mythsoc.org.nyud.net:8090/mythcon/35/speech/

Love, Books, Way, Nature

“Just remember, you can't climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Commencement Speech at University of Southern California http://graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0067-schwarzenegger.htm (May 2009). 2000s

Success

“Who knows who wrote that song of summer,
That blackbirds sing at dusk,
This is a song of colour,
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust,
Then climb into bed and turn to dust.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Singing, Summer

“People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to—but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 2, “The Green-Eyed Monster” (p. 21)

Men, People, Way, Nature

“That said, there can be little doubt that exceptionally low interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes, and hence on home mortgages, have been a major factor in the recent surge of homebuilding and home turnover, and especially in the steep climb in home prices. Although a 'bubble' in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Greenspan on June 9, 2005 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2005/200506092/default.htm. 2000s

Home, Appearance

“If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John, whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cesspool.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Slavery of Our Times

Source: The Slavery of Our Times (1890), Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us

Time

“Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate “tourist traps” which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the “intrepid tourist.” This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“The Tourist,” Raised by Puppets (1990).

Travel, Housing

“Could you see the aisles of women?
Could you see them screaming and weeping?
Could you see the storm rising?
Could you see the guy who was driving?
Could you climb higher and higher?
Could you climb right over the top?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Women, Guy

“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 (1910–1989) American physicist and inventor

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.

Strong, Training

“The track temperature is at 32 degrees celsius already and it's climbing like a mountain face at the moment.”

Martin Brundle (1959) British racecar driver

Mountain

“The rugged trees are mingling
Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel
To clasp the boughs above.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Serenade http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page189, St. 14

Love, Tree

“If you stand under a mountain and look up, you will get a bad pain in the neck. If you look at the ground and take one step, and then another step, then you come to a little bump. You think of how to climb over it; then you find a gap and you jump over it and you go on like that, one step at a time, and suddenly, you find yourself standing on top of the mountain.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

The Rediff Cricket Interview, Kapil Dev

Pain, Mountain, Thinking, Time

“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 (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"Washington and the Puget Sound" in Picturesque California (1888-1890); reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 20
1880s

Pleasure, Feeling, Home, Mountain

“Character is what you are. Reputation is what others think you are. The reason that some fail to climb the ladder of success, or of leadership if you want to call it that, is that there is a difference between reputation and character. The two do not always coincide. A man may be considered to have sterling character. Opportunity might come to that man; but if he has the reputation for something he is not, he may fail that opportunity. I think character is the foundation of successful leadership.”

Lucian Truscott (1895–1965) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Quoted in Air Force Journal of Logistics, March 22, 2005, Notable quotes.(Lucien Truscott)(Brief Article)

Thinking, Success

“It is important to teach our young about who they are and how culture can empower them to help the greater community. It is very difficult, especially in the age of technology to curb what mass-media and marketing try to tell us who we are, and even more difficult when those closest to you act uninterested. It is an uphill climb, sometimes alone, to find the truth.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

As quoted in interview with Golwg 360, Welsh language online magazine.

Truth, Age, Communication, Help

“Flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves
every precious dream and vision underneath the stars
You climbed on the ladder
with the wind in your sails
you came like a comet
blazing your trail
too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon!”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Whole Of The Moon"
This Is the Sea (1985)

Dreams, Star

“Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book i. Stanza 1.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“… [Y]our observer's camera is clicking steadily. It's beautiful up above the sunlit clouds. The smooth drone of your twin motors makes you happy. You feel like singing and then you do. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see four black dots, growing larger momentarily. It's an enemy patrol of German Messerschmitts. Your gunner has seen them too. You hear the rattle of the machine gun as you put your bomber in a fast climbing turn, but the Messerschmitt fighters climb faster. They form under your tail, two on each side. One by one, they attack. A yellow light flashes in front of you. The first fighter slips away while the next comes on at you. Again that smashing yellow flame. Your observer falls over unconscious. Before you can think, the next Messerschmitt is upon you. A terrific jolt. Your port engine belches smoke. It's been hit…. You force-land on the first Allied airfield. That night, seated next to a hospital bed where your observer nurses a scalp wound, you hear an enemy communique. A British bomber was shot down over the lines today. Well, you puff a cigarette and grin.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Woo, Elaine. " Larry LeSueur/'Murrow Boy' former war correspondant http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/local/me-lesueur7", (obituary), Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2003, accessed June 21, 2011. As quoted by Stanley W. Cloud and Lynne Olson in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, ISBN 0395877539. LeSueur just "after interviewing a young British pilot who had just flown a reconnaissance mission over Germany.

Beauty, Feeling, Thinking, Light

“As long as his strength permits, the poor mortal must always climb new mountains.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Mountain

“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 book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 11

Sun

“The young people who now proposed to devote themselves to intellectual studies no longer took the term to mean attending a university and taking a nibble of this or that from the dainties offered by celebrated and loquacious professors who without authority offered them the crumbs of what had once been higher education. Now they had to study just as stringently and methodically as the engineers and technicians of the past, if not more so. They had a steep path to climb, had to purify and strengthen their minds by dint of mathematics and scholastic exercises in Aristotelian philosophy. Moreover, they had to learn to renounce all those benefits which previous generations of scholars had considered worth striving for: rapid and easy money-making, celebrity and public honors, the homage of the newspapers, marriages with daughters of bankers and industrialists, a pampered and luxurious style of life.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Life, Money, Marriage, People

“The higher the trail the steeper it grows
Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs
The stone bridge is slippery with green moss
Cloud after cloud keeps flying by
Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk
The moon shines down on the bright pool
I climb the highest peak once more
To wait where the lone crane flies”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Waiting, Flying

“[on vegetarianism] I didn't climb to the top of the fuckin' food chain to eat carrots.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Food

“A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Love, Life, Men, Search

“Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams
Blue green vistas locked in white clouds
The mist makes my bandana wet
Dew coats my grass cape
My feet climb in straw sandals
My hand holds an old wooden stick
When I gaze down again on the dusty world
It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World, Beauty, Dreams, Mountain

““Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?”
“I think… that those are all very different things.”
“You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.”
“Sir?”
“A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 276)

Love, Life, Men, Flowers

“I was on top of the mountain. But there was nothing there. Just clouds. And I found that you can't live on that mountain. But when it throws you off — oh, how you long for it! I would kill to climb it again. I would sell my soul. It is so stupid. […] I took the standard. And now I can't even become a farmer again. The mountain won't let me.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 1

Stupidity, Soul, Mountain

“Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

An American Childhood (1987)

Water

“Ridgway and I climbed a ladder inside the tower to the belfry, spoke to the sergeant observer there, and looked over the landscape on the German side of the river. Then Ridgway turned to the sergeant and at length asked him to put a mortar concentration on a point of woods a few hundred yards away on the German side. The sergeant, unperturbed, cranked his field telephone and spoke to someone at the mortar position in the fields behind the church. "Joe," he said, "remember the dead horse we used as an aiming point yesterday? This target is about fifty over and 100 left. Ten rounds when you're ready." The rounds were in the air almost at once, and their accuracy was impeccable; but I was far from happy about the way my sergeant had shortcut the standard methods of adjusting fire as prescribed in the mortar manual. Although an artilleryman and not the expert on infantry weapons which Ridgway was, I was sure the "dead horse" method of adjustment was not in the book.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 94

Books, Way, Horse, Dead

“Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.”

René Daumal book Mount Analogue

Mount Analogue (1952)

Art, Mountain, Knowledge

“If there is no choice, we will declare war on the millionaires in Israel. The ground is burning to such an extent, that the rich people of the land should not be surprised if certain groups would arrive and just climb on their houses and expel them from their homes, or if their daughters could no longer walk outside. Each one would have to establish a private police force. When the struggles begin, illustrating the fact that we cannot continue in this condition where there are groups that accumulate wealth and get rich in a legendary fashion, while others are left so far behind, no one should fool himself into thinking that his house and yard are out of the game.”

Amir Peretz (1952) Israeli politician

Source: Interview by Orna Kadosh in Maariv, May 12, 2000 http://www.nrg.co.il/online/archive/ART47/692.html http://www.nrg.co.il/online/archive/ART48/171.html

War, People, Fools, Home