181 Quotes by Reinhold Messner

When I was leaving the auditorium at the end of one of my lectures, someone shouted out, "You've been lucky!" That's right, I thought, I've had more luck than any man deserves.

Having everythin is boring; I'm convinced of that. Once you have something - knowledge, skills, possessions - or have achieved something - climbing Mount Everest, for example - it becomes banal.

My mountain as a symbol for Communist ideals? Nonsense. Yet that seems to be what it is all coming to. I do not consider my death tragic. Tragedy is the death of the soul, not the body. The Chinese had their ladder. I had my spirit.

Anyone wanting to reach the summit must lift his spirits to its heights

For it depended entirely on me as to whether the myth of the mountain was to be transformed and the path found between the supernatural and reality. It was in me that all expectations were vested.

None of those climbs, including my own, match what Mallory and Irvine did in June 1924. Mallory who gave the mountain a spirit that cannot be captured with radio or telephone equipment, nor seen with telephoto lenses or satellite pictures. Daring to attempt the impossible, risking everything for a dream, and refusing to capitulate in the face of adversity, Mallory, to me, personifies heroism.

A kind of relationship had developed between the mountain and me, which had to grow and endure in order to become timeless, even after my death.

Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goalseems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attentionhas diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is nowgreater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like deaththrough freezing - a pleasant one.

How often on an expedition have I told myself, "That's enough!" and then a few weeks later when the effort, worry, and hardship were forgotten, I began dreaming about a new journey, planning a new climb. Pretty soon I'd be off again. And once again, it would be dangerous.I never intended to risk my neck, but I knew that if I were ever to stop dreaming or traveling I would be old. And that would drive me to despair.