Best climbing quotes

"it's a good kind of pain" -me

"I couldn't sleep, many aid section lay above, possible death and to make things worse I had lost my glasses. But I would wake, try or fall and die, there was no bail in my brain at that time. Dave just snored away and I was getting so pissed at him, that I threw a rock to wake him up, "What's wrong Coz." "I'm gonna die tomorrow and all you can do is sleep." "You can sleep too, just relax, you'll be fine, it's not up to us what happens." And with that he started to snore again as I toss and turned and dreaded the raising of the sun."

-Scott Cosgrove

"A door would open, we'd walk inside and the key to all knowledge would be printed on the walls" -Galen Rowel

"It's a complete withdrawal into an excellence that is valid in and of itself.  You learn to live in a vertical world and when you're up there on that rock you just don't want to know about anything else."

Jim McCarthy

"I'm not off-route, I'm doing a first ascent" 

"In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can't."

"A climber's day always starts at the crux: getting out of bed."

Did you say cake? 

 "Sport climbing is like sport fucking, a lot of fun and not much commitment." - Jim Bridwell

"Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end."   ---Edward Whymper

"Try harder" from my soon to be throttled son who is probably also being yelled at in language not particularly appropriate to be shouting at your belayer.

More and more people seem to be separating from nature. I'm trying to go in a different direction. I'm getting closer and closer. Dean Potter. 

[overhead at local sport crag] "At the gym, they teach this convoluted method of belaying where you always keep your brake hand on the rope." -JT 512

"I've seen 5.11 divided into 11 different grades of increasing difficulty, as follows: 5.11a, 5.10d, 5.11-, 5.11b, 5.11, 5.11c, 5.9 squeeze, 5.11+, 5.10 OW, 5.12a, 5.11d" - Brutus of Wyde

"I love climbing because it feels so good when I stop..."    - Karl Baba

Backstep wrote:

[overhead at local sport crag] "At the gym, they teach this convoluted method of belaying where you always keep your brake hand on the rope." -JT 512

"I've seen 5.11 divided into 11 different grades of increasing difficulty, as follows: 5.11a, 5.10d, 5.11-, 5.11b, 5.11, 5.11c, 5.9 squeeze, 5.11+, 5.10 OW, 5.12a, 5.11d" - Brutus of Wyde

"I love climbing because it feels so good when I stop..."    - Karl Baba

And of course one can fill ten pages with Golden Sentiment, information and rye wit from The Professor Richard Goldstone!

//quote//
Nowadays, the real issue is rappel slings. Personally, over the many years I've climbed, I've come across several rappel slings tied with water knots in which one end (it is always the top end) had either worked completely inside the knot or was just about to. I'm not dead because I checked the knots, but either the party before me didn't, or the knot suffered a lot of tail creep during the last set of rappels. Either way, wittingly or unwittingly, they were playing Russian roulette.\\quote\\

Context: Imagine the end of a long day of climbing, 5 guys and one young woman crammed into a Tacoma, taking the long drive home. It's silent, all lost in thought of our accomplishments and flails. Suddenly, out of the silence, she, the one lone woman in the midst of 5 stinky, tired guys says, and i quote,

 "I haven't been laid in a while, but that sure felt good".

Jubilation and hilarity ensued.

My own motto, I feel, is pretty good.

"If it ain't fun, it ain't done"

To the question. What matters most in life?" he paused a second, then quickly looked around the room...He was not thinking about what the answer would be. He knew it cold. Rather he was scanning the images running across his mind: a catalogue of heroic ventures. Of firsts to be: El Cap, The Diamond, the Eiger, and others. Layton leaned forward across the table, his elbows sliding over the many oaths, and fantasies carved into it, looked me square in the eyes and said "The big walls, man, the big walls". And he meant it.

Wayne Goss on Layton Kor

Big B, does everyone else know that's from The Eiger Sanction?

"I may not be very good at climbing, but the one thing I don't suck at is bailing."  - Steve Richert 

"Your first time trad climbing is like your first time having sex. It's awesome, but you're not."

Whillans: You guys going up? 

Japanese climber: Yes, yes, we go up. 

Whillans: You may be going a lot higher than you think!

Don Whillans, to a Japanese party, while retreating off the north face of Eiger in a storm

What's Eiger sanction?

"Its not an adventure unless something goes wrong" - Yvonne Chouinard

"Always do what you are afraid to do" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All good things are wild and free" Henry David Thoreau

“We climbed it because it won’t always be there,” Kor famously quipped.