Skip to content

Archives

    “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

      “You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.” ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

        “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” ~ African Proverb

          “For life–which is in any way worthy, is like ascending a mountain. When you have climbed to the first shoulder of the hill, you find another rise above you, and yet another peak, and the height to be achieved seems infinity: but you find as you ascend that the air becomes purer and more bracing, that the clouds gather more frequently below than above, that the sun is warmer than before and that you not only get a clearer view of Heaven, but that you gain a wider view of earth, and that your horizon is perpetually growing larger.” ~ Endicott Peabody

          Dead Poet’s Society

            “Gather the rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying;
            And this same flower that smiles today, to-morrow will be dying.”

            “Why does the poet write these lines?” Keating asks “Because we are food for worms, lads! Because we’re only going to experience a limited number of springs, summers, and falls. One day, hard as it is to believe, each and every one of us is going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die!”

            [now looking at old photographs of former Welton students in a trophy case]
            “They are not that different than any of you, are they? There’s hope in their eyes, just like in yours. They believe themselves destined for wonderful things, just like many of you. Well, where are those smiles now, boys? What of that hope?”

            “Did most of them not wait until it was too late before making their lives into even one iota of what they were capable? In chasing the almighty deity of success did they not squander their boyhood dreams? Most of those gentlemen are fertilizing daffodils now. However, if you get very close, boys, you can hear them whisper. Go ahead, lean in. Hear it?

            “Carpe Diem, lads. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary!”

            ~ The Dead Poets Society

            Edmund Hillary´s 10 Steps to the Summit of the World

              1) Nothing ventured, nothing gained
              2) Challenge, uncertainty, excitement
              3) Fear makes you focus
              4) Passion gives you confidence
              5) Fun makes for a great team
              6) Make sure you have more than one thing to live for
              7) Resist the flock factor
              8) You are all you have
              9) Great challenges result in powerful experiences
              10) A view from the summit – to new horizons

                “A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, a trip takes us.” ~ John Steinbeck

                  “The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, “What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?” and my answer must at once be, “It is no use.” There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. 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

                    “Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction – so easy to lapse into – that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.” ~ Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit