Yvon Chouinard Quotes

The Sherpas play a very important role in most mountaineering expeditions, and in fact many of them lead along the ridges and up to the summit.

There are many questions, but I cannot answer because I'm not a businessman, I am a climber.

I finished my degree so I'm definitely hoping I have some more time to climb.

The tide of visitors will float slowly about the bottom of the valley as harmless scum collecting in hotel and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls eloquent as ever.

This hill though high I covent ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way of life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.

The urge to climb will never be explained. In olden days, perhaps it was a wish to reach the stars. Today, anyone so minded can buy a seat on a plane and feel himself master of the skies. Even so, he will not have rock under his feet, or air upon his face; nor will he know the silence that comes only on the hills.

Our ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first of many short cuts. To crack a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which fathered the tool, and between the cracking of a marrow-bone and the riding down town in an automobile lies only a difference of degree.

Nobody, who looks at a shard of flint lying beneath a rock ledge, or who finds a splintered log by the side of the road would ever find magic in their solitude. But in the right circumstances, if you bring them together, you can start a fire that consumes the world.

Resolve will melt no rocks. But it can scale them.

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

Love on the rocks, ain't no surprise. Pour me a drink and I'll tell you some lies.

Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. "No, she's all right."

Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone and hospitalized a brick.

Potty mouth, rock star, at the top and still tryna climb, Drop the top sit back recline

I love all the '90s kind of grunge, and I love classic rock: That's where the spectrum lies.

I like mountains, always have done. Big obstinate bits of rock sticking up where they're not wanted and getting in folk's way. Great. Climbing them is a different matter altogether though. I hate that.

I know truth is more like a mountain that has to be scaled. The peak of the mountain pierces the clouds and can only rarely be seen, and has never been reached. And what you see of it, moreover, depends upon the flank of the mountain you stand upon, and how exhausted getting even so far has made you. Virtue lies in looking upwards, toiling upwards, and sometimes joyously leaping from one precarious crag of fact and feeling to the next.

And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked song they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks and they didn’t frighten me any more

Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie.

I write a lot of more instrumental music than I do vocal music. It's because I come out of a background of playing piano and then playing sax for a number of years. I kind of got into rock backwards. A lot of guys go into rock and then get sick of it and then go into something else. I came the other way, so I've always just had a lot more stuff lying around.

The future of Yosemite climbing lies not in Yosemite, but in using the new techniques in the great granite ranges of the world.

Hatred is the ballast of the rock which lies upon our necks and underfoot.

You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave - now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks - tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

I’ve heard the expression climbing walls, but I never thought I’d experience it, let alone like that,” she murmured, her mouth curling into what was probably a dreamy smile.