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

Why climb Mount Everest? Because it's there.

The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.

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.

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.

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

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.