Quotations
Harding describes reaching the top of El Capitan:
I suppose this article could be titled "The Conquest of El Capitan". However, as I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was conqueror and who was conquered: I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was.Harding on his legendary endurance:
Oh, God, I was always a total mess. I hate climbers like Royal Robbins who are so superior. He doesn’t mean to be, he just is. He’s methodic, scientific, capable, and so competent it makes me envious. I was climbing with some hotshot Brit in Yosemite once, and he said, "My God, Harding, you can’t do anything!" I said, "I know, but I can do it forever."Harding, on drinking, satirizing the American Alpine Club's "Accident Reports":
It has recently been demonstrated that drinking leashes can be useful in preventing needless tragedies in the home was well as on the rock. For example, at the gathering of friends in the ASCENTE office in Fresno, Batso was into his cup (as he is liable to do). Becoming insenced over some topic of conversation (as he is liable to do), he staggered off blindly, apparently heading for the upstairs bedroom. However, he referred to the wrong door and fell down the cellar stairs. Fortunately he was unhurt, wedged between the stair case and the hot water heater. Needless to say, he could have been very seriously injured, and although this wasn't the case, a drinking leash could have spared him the indignity of such an accident.Harding's "Reflections on a Broken Down Climber":
My once-keen analytical mind has become so dulled by endless hours of baking in the hot sun, thrashing about in tight chimneys, pulling at impossibly heavy loads.... so that now my mental state is comparable to that of a Peruvian Indian, well stoked on coca leaves...Read more about this topic: Warren Harding (climber)
Famous quotes containing the word quotations:
“A book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book—it is a plaything.”
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)