Tommy Barker wrote:It's not originally a climbing quote but it's associated with Mason's antarctic expedition.  “Just have one more try—it’s dead easy to die, It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.” Robert Service

"That night I drove into town and got a bottle. The next day, while Bachar went for an El Cap day (three thousand feet, solo, of course), I wandered through dark desert corridors, scouting for turtles, making garlands from wildflowers, staring up at the titanic sky—doing all those things a person does on borrowed time."

A pitch-perfect final sentence to a true classic of climbing literature, John Long's "The Only Blasphemy".

Gunkiemike wrote: Or Dirty Harry's take on it: "Dying ain't much of a livin', boy."

From Eric Beck, one of the original Yosemite bums:

"At either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class".

caribouman1052 wrote:From Eric Beck, one of the original Yosemite bums: "At either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class".

"And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side."
From Moby Dick

The whole chapter on the whale line is pretty good: etc.usf.edu/lit2go/42/moby-…

"We climbed it because it won't always be there." Layton Kor on why he climbed desert towers