"The truth is, I'm just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challen..."
"The truth is, I'm just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challenges in his life."
"The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into delicate contrast."
"The voices of women need to be heard. The volume needs to be turned up."
"A traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends mainly on personal idiosyncrasies."
"A woman brought her child with an abscess in the lower part of the back, and offered as much corn as she could carry for some medicine; we administered to it of course very cheerfully."
"You can't live someone else's expectations in life. It's a recipe for disaster."
"When I was climbing, I built up a close relationship with the Sherpa people."
"I was heartily sorry to leave Leh, with its dazzling skies and abounding colour and movement, its stirring topics of talk, and the culture and exceeding kindness of the Moravian missionaries. Helpfulness was the rule."
"Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself."
"I can remember when I first went into the Himalayan area way back in 1951. Money, for instance, was not important at all to the local people. But now, finance has become just as important to them as it is to us, and this is a change maybe not for the better."
"The 6th of August in the morning we saw an opening in the land and we ran into it, and anchored in 7 and a half fathom water, 2 miles from the shore, clean sand."
"On the acquisition of Louisiana, in the year 1803, the attention of the government of the United States, was early directed towards exploring and improving the new territory."
"The increasing importance of Sydney must in some measure be attributed to the flourishing condition of the colony itself, to the industry of its farmers, to the successful enterprise of its merchants, and to particular local causes."
"The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both that the Earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer dispute about whether it is flat."
"It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert."
"These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information."
"Every day some new fact comes to light - some new obstacle which threatens the gravest obstruction. I suppose this is the reason which makes the game so well worth playing."
"My first expedition was at about the age of eight."
"However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day."
"Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other."
"Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth."
"I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really."
"I was happy in the midst of dangers and inconveniences."
"I have a whole, you know, pocket full of dreams I want to achieve. I don't know in which order they're going to fall."
"I'm sort of a strange bird."
