I'm currently reading Hermann Buhl's, "Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage". He was quite the writer, very poetic.

It is true that these charming creatures constitute a serious menace for many a mountaineer, often diverting him from his ideals and aims. But undertand myself well enough to know just how far the influence of the female sex was likely to get a hold on me. Just at that moment, when I happened to be a temporary invalid, I could think of no more pleasant way of spending the time than to go about in amiable association with a pretty girl.

That did not prevent the Mountains from remaining the Law of my life.

What are some of your favorites?

"Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous " Reinhold Messner

"Against all odds, I somehow managed to stay married and keep climbing." - Jon Krakaur, Eiger Dreams

"there are other Annapurnas in the lives of men” - Herzog, in Annapurna

"Only those that don't climb mountains ask why people climb them. For those who climb, the answer is both obvious and almost impossible to explain. Perhaps the simplest answer is that life is infinitely simplified when you're climbing. The everyday concerns of livelihood, of social standing, of overdue bills and futureless romances all fall away before the vast and overwhelming absolute of the mountain. Aside from an ice axe...there is nothing to rely on but yourself and those with whom you climb. On the precipice not only of the world but of your own existence, you look back with a mixture of pity and contempt at those who fuss away their time on the wheel of the working day." ~ "The Ice Soldier" by Paul Watkins.

"Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf." --Aldo Leopold, "Thinking like a Mountain"

"...We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." -- George Leigh Mallory, 1922, before he departed for the Himalayas.

Not from anything related to climbing, but I find it appropriate for anyone who finds their enlightenment beyond the road's end:

"The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin the greater the adventure), a margin whose width and length may be determined by unknown factors but whose navigation is determined by the measure of the adventurer's nerve and wits. It is exhilarating to live by one's nerves or toward the summit of one's wits.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

lcarreau wrote:"Marriage is like a phone call in the night: first the ring, and then you wake up."

Good thing my phone ain't been ringing!

Not sure where I read this one: "Time spent climbing mountains will not be subtracted from your life."

sjarelkwint wrote:Johnny Dawes (google if you don't know him ...)

"...probably the most stupid risky thing I have ever done was on a deserted motorway. I got out of one side of the car and, with a brick on the accelerator, went across the bonnet and in the other window... I found the world was incredibly boring. Being ground into a sort of a mush."

"The Hearse Traverse" is a pretty well known story of Havard? climbing club members crawling out of one station wagon window and making a complete traverse of the car while underweigh towards the White Mountains to go ice climbing.

"The downside is that you might die" --Les Stroud

One of my faves:

There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they're in the mountains, and all the rest.

-Alex Lowe

Irish saying: "Marry a mountain girl and you marry the whole mountain."

"The most dangerous food is wedding cake.' ~American Proverb