Alpine Quotes:

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

- Edmund Hillary

source: "That's Life : Wild Wit & Wisdom". Book by Bonnie Louise Kuchler, 2003.

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Graduation, Inspirational Confidence, Inspirational High School Graduation

The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it.... When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe.

- William O. Douglas

topic: Meaningful, Sleep, Journey, Alpine, Wind Blowing

There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.

- Bill Bowerman

topic: Motivational, Running, Not Giving Up, Marathon Motivational, Marathon Runners

There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.

- Billy Connolly

topic: Being Happy, Weather, Clothes, Marathon Motivational, Marathon Runners

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

- John Ruskin

topic: Change, Weather, Different, Marathon Motivational, Marathon Runners

There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.

- Charles Spurgeon

source: "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 18), 1895.

topic: Alpine, Regions, Renown

Historically, many of the great names in alpine climbing seemed to have just gone climbing as training. In fact, the model alpinist has often portrayed himself in literature as a half-crazed nonconformist, living life on the edge every moment he's sober enough to climb. It is true that amazing feats of skill and daring have been accomplished using this rather random approach. For some climbers that "life on the edge" approach may be the only way they can accomplish these feats, but there are far better methods to prepare for the challenges of alpine climbing.

- Steve House

source: Source: www.omnivoracious.com

topic: Live Life, Skills, Names, Climbers, Life On The Edge

Under his spurning feet, the road Like an arrowly alpine river flowed And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind....

- Thomas Buchanan Read

topic: Ocean, Wind, Rivers, Sped, Alpine

There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing

- Ranulph Fiennes

topic: Adventure, Weather, Inappropriate, Marathon Motivational, Marathon Runners

I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour.

- Lance Armstrong

topic: Stars, Texas, Years, Helmet, I Want To Die

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones Forget not.

- John Milton

topic: Father, Lying, Mountain, Alpine

Language is as fragile as the little alpine plant.

- Martha Ronk

topic: Littles, Language, Plant, Alpine

Like mighty eagle soaring light. O'er antelopes on Alpine height. The anchor heaves, the ship swings free, The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!

- Thomas Lovell Beddoes

source: Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Thomas Forbes Kelsall, Charles Dacres Bevan (1851). “The Poems, Posthumous and Collected: Death's jest-book. The brides' tragedy”, p.11

topic: Adventure, Swings, Eagles, Antelopes, Alpine

The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound.

- Peter Medawar

topic: Cheerful, Bells, Faults, Alpine

Take your brush here and there like a bee in an alpine meadow. In other words, don't laboriously work on or try to finish off one particular part. Paint promiscuously.

- Robert Genn

topic: Trying, Bees, Paint, Alpine

Christ by His intercession is able to save thee beyond the horizon and largest compass of thy thoughts, even to the utmost. In danger Christ lashes us to Himself, as Alpine guides do when there is perilous ice to get over.

- Alexander MacLaren

source: "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 88), 1895.

topic: Ice, Horizon, Able, Lashes, Beyond The Horizon

Everyone had always told me I had to see alpine flowers, since I was writing about flowers, and I had never seen these. So I happened to be teaching a class at the University of Colorado, and I got to go for hikes that took me there. But my perspective was most often down at ground level, trying to see quite tiny exquisite flowers.

- Martha Ronk

topic: Flower, Teaching, Writing, Alpine

I'm halfway through a novel set in two time frames - Austin in the 1960's and Alpine (Texas) in present day. It started out to be a small, lighthearted, humorous book about family relationships; I was tired of writing war stories and tragedies.

- Elizabeth Crook

source: Source: www.elizabethcrookbooks.com

topic: War, Humorous, Book, War Stories, Family Relationship

The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].

- Sylvia Earle

source: "Her Majesty Of The Deep Blue Sea: An Interview With Dr. Sylvia Earle, Part One". Interview with Dan Linehan, www.mission-blue.org. January 23, 2013.

topic: Ocean, Ice, Sea, Ocean Acidification, Alpine

And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

- Vladimir Nabokov

source: Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov”, p.561, Vintage

topic: Death, Night, Thinking, Alpine

When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman dispenses with the office of the mighty member, when she sheathed her natural weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts to still more formidable enginery; to tears it may be, a solvent more powerful than that with which Hannibal softened the alpine rocks.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

topic: Powerful, Women, Mean, Alpine

Some of the events in the Olympics don't make sense to me. I don't understand the connection to any reality... Like in the Winter Olympics they have that biathlon that combines cross-country skiing with shooting a gun. How many alpine snipers are into this? Ski, shoot a gun... ski, bang, bang, bang... It's like combining swimming and strangling a guy. Why don't we have that? That makes absolutely as much sense to me. Just put people in the pool at the end of each lane for the swimmers.

- Jerry Seinfeld

topic: Funny, Country, Winter, Strangling, Winter Olympics

When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper. . .and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.

- Lucy Maud Montgomery

topic: Writing, Names, Paper, Alpine

It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.430

topic: Beauty, Men, Rose, Rectitude, Alpine

On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou.

- Matthew Arnold

source: Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.229, Delphi Classics

topic: Summer, Lonely, Gay, Alpine

Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go Over those hoary crests, divinely led! Art thou that huntress of the silver bow Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below, Like the wild chamois from her Alpine snow, Where hunters never climbed--secure from dread?

- Thomas Hood

topic: Mother, Art, Moon, Huntress, Alpine

Muti is going to do the Alpine Symphony this year. He will do it well because it is not very well known.

- Eugene Ormandy

topic: Funny, Years, Symphony, Alpine

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

source: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech at MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. December 5, 1955.

topic: Tired, Iron, Feet, Alpine, Bleakness

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

- Georg C. Lichtenberg

source: "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook L 50, 1799.

topic: War, Dark, Clouds, Above The Clouds, Alpine

The solitary ascent of the Dru had the immediate effect of expanding the horizons of my ideas about mountaineering. It made me aware of possibilities well in advance of the times, which were characterized by very restricted methods. This was how the superb pyramid of K2 surfaced once more in the list of my projects. But I chose K2 as a way for giving concrete form to my new concept of mountaineering: to climb the second highest mountain in the world solo, alpine style, and without oxygen.

- Walter Bonatti

topic: Oxygen, Ideas, Pyramids, Superb, Alpine