To struggle and to understand. Never the last without the first. That is the law.
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money.
The greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure.
We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth.
We don’t live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.
The highest of the world’s mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.
Just to lie here in the sun with great white peaks all around me and the biggest glacier in Europe at my feet, to eat from time to time, to sleep a little and dream a great deal- it is a heavenly existence.
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.
The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this; What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.
Why climb Mount Everest? Because it’s there.
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.
For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.
My mind is in a state of constant rebellion. I believe that will always be so.
Half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience – visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible.
Mountaineers have often observed a lack of clarity in their mental state at high altitudes; it is difficult for the stupid mind to observe how stupid it is.
One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.