George Mallory quotes

George Mallory was a British mountaineer famously associated with early attempts to summit Mount Everest. His expeditions in the 1920s captured the imagination of the world and inspired generations of climbers. He disappeared during a summit attempt, and he is renowned for his enduring mystery and the iconic response: "Because it's there." Here are 9 of his quotes:

I look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door on to a dismal world of snow and vanishing hopes - & yet, & yet, & yet there have been a good many things to set the other side.

George Mallory

Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.

George Mallory

One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.

George Mallory

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.

George Mallory

We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth.

George Mallory

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.

George Mallory

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.

George Mallory

Because it's there.

George Mallory