Umberto Eco Quotes

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

The Nose is a beautiful route. The best thing is that, in one day, you get to climb so much. You climb and climb and climb the whole day.

Mountain climbing is my passion, and to empower women through my expeditions is the reason.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the 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. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I climbed nine mountains because I love adventure, and I got addicted to that feeling and I never wanted to stop. I wanted to see what I could accomplish. I finally can say that I stood on top of the world.

I'm not the kind of person who's going to look at the top of a mountain and go, 'Oh, look at that! That's lovely. That's lovely, that top of that mountain.' I'm the kind of person who's going to go, 'Oh, my God! That's so lovely! Let's go climb up it!'

There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same when you get there.

I'm kind of obsessed by Everest and all those men that mountaineer and take themselves to extreme limits.

The mission of professional mountain climbers is almost impossibly difficult by design: Their very livelihood is based on achieving the unprecedented. Their expeditions are complicated, exhausting, often life-threatening. Risk is the fuel that keeps them going.

I'm done with Everest. I did it three times, and I need to be good at that and be happy with it and focus on other climbs.

I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.

There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal.

When I was a small child, I began on small mountains. Now, as I am getting older, the small peaks are getting bigger. If I am lucky, some day I will end on a small peak.

I came to Flatanger with a plan in my mind to bolt a really, really hard thing that would be beautiful and keep me motivated to try it for a long time, in some underdeveloped area.

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.

I have permits to be the first person in the world to walk across the Grand Canyon so that's a process we'll start working on. I'd say within three to five years I'll accomplish that as well.

Beyond racing, I just love the art form of running, of conceiving new ideas like the 50 Marathons in 50 States in 50 Days. It's the ultimate expression of what I love to do, which is run, and travel, and see this great country.

You can get a lawyer with two months off or a New York socialite who wants to play at being Lewis and Clark and put them up there, but Everest is still in charge; it can still kick butt.

Anytime you finish a climb, there's always the next thing you can try.

Steve Fossett and I would share a common belief that it is possible and good to challenge yourself to the extreme.

Meeting Australian mountaineer and author Tim Macartney-Snape when I was 16 in 1994 had a big impact on me. His ascent of Everest from sea to summit captured my imagination.

Why climb? That's a question that baffles me. It perplexes me. I really asked that a lot on Everest. I can't justify it. I can't say it's for a good cause. All I can say is look at the history of exploration: it's full of vainglorious pursuits.

The best climber is the one who has the most fun.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.