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.

The greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

To struggle and to understand. Never the last without the first. That is the law.

Half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience - visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible.

Just to lie here in the sun with great white peaks all around me and the biggest glacier in Europe at my feet, to eat from time to time, to sleep a little and dream a great deal- it is a heavenly existence.

My mind is in a state of constant rebellion. I believe that will always be so.