Sometimes, when a climb seems too challenging, or it starts to rain during a hike, or you misplace your passport on a backpacking trip, it can be easy to think forget it and give up. But think about how much you would miss if you let that thought win! We know that sometimes you just need a little extra inspiration, so today we’ve put together a list of 99 – yes, 99! – of our favourite hiking and backpacking quotes. Which one is your favouite?
1. “A walk in nature walks the soul back home.” – Mary Davis
2. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you are climbing it.” – Andy Rooney
3. “You’re off to great places, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.” – Dr. Seuss
4. “Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” – Gary Snyder
5. “For hiking is one of those things that you can only do when you have the determination in you.” – Unknown
6. “Deep down, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.” – Carl Sagan
7. “Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.” – Greg Child
8. “I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” – John Burroughs
9. “Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.” – John Muir
10. “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than trees.” – Henry David Thoreau
11. “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” – John Muir
12. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary
13. “You need special shoes for hiking—and a bit of a special soul as well.” – Terri Guillemets
14. “If you think you’ve peaked, find a new mountain.” – Unknown
15. “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir
16. “Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.” – Sir Martin Conway
17. “Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein
18. “To walk in nature is to witness a thousand miracles.” – Mary Davis
19. “The best view comes after the hardest climb.” – Unknown
20. “Carry as little as possible, but choose that little with care.” – Earl Shaffer
21. “After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.” – G.M. Trevelyan
22. “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
23. “Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking; You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits.” – Cindy Ross
24. “Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise.” – Carrie Latet
25. “Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.” – Frank Herbert
26. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” – Beverly Sills
27. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” – John Muir
28. “Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” – Walt Whitma
29. “When everything feels like an uphill struggle, Just think of the view from the top.” – Anonymous
30. “Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.” – Hermann Buhl
31. “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle
32. “You won, this time. But you are as big as you are ever going to get. And I’m still growing.” – Sir Edmund Hillary
33. “The mountains are calling and I must go.” – John Muir
34. “To travel, to experience and learn: that is to live.” – Tenzing Norgay
35. “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” – Edward Abbey
36. “Anywhere is ‘within walking distance’.” – Unknown
37. “Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street.” – William Blake
38. “Walking is a man’s best medicine.” – Hippocrates
39. “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” – Frank A. Clark
40. “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir
41. “We don’t stop hiking because we grow old. We grow old because we stop hiking.” – Finis Mitchell
42. “For hiking is one of those things that you can only do when you have the determination in you.” – Unknown
43. “If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” – Raymond Inmon
44. “The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain but is inspired by it.” – William Artur Ward
45. “Mountain hikes instilled in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit or peak.” – Paul D. Boyer
46. “Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” – Ed Viesturs
47. “Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature’s darlings.” – John Muir
48. “There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.” – Alex Lowe
49. “You never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.” – Lito Tejada-Flores
50. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” – Beverly Sills
51. “Hiking and happiness go hand in hand or foot in boot.” – Diane Spicer
52. “Hiking is not escapism; it’s realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.” – Jennifer Pharr Davis
53. “That’s the difference between backpackers and holidaymakers. The former can’t help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it.” – Harry Whitewolf
54. “You might be poor on money, but rich on life” – Kasper Raunholst
55. “I love waking up in the morning not knowing what’s gonna happen or who I’m gonna meet, where I’m gonna wind up.” – Jack Dawson
56. “And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” – Randy Komisar
57. “The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G.K. Chesterto
58. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow” – Anita Desai
59. “Say yes, and you’ll figure it out afterwards.” – Tina Fey
60. “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
61. “Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.” – Charles Bukowski
62. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries” – Aldous Huxley
63. “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.” – Judith Thurman
64. “Part of us believes the new car is better because it lasts longer. But, in fact, that’s the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you, whereas a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory.” – Daniel Gilber
65. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
66. “Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.” – Isabelle Eberhardt
67. “My favourite thing to do is to go where I’ve never been.” – Diane Arbus
68. “Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.” – Anthony Doerr
69. “What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it.” – Juliette Binoche
70. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
71. “There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” – Charlotte Eriksson
72. “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Rosalia de Castr
73. “I’m in love. Again. How on earth do people pick a favorite travel spot?” – Jen Malone
74. “Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life”― Michael Palin
75. “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974
78. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”― Anita Desai
79. “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
80. “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
81. “Travel brings power and love back into your life.”― Rumi
82. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber
83. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” – St. Augustine
84. “Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”― Tennessee Williams
85. “See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream.”― Ray Bradbury
86. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller
87. “One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” — Edith Wharton
88. “If everyone in the world took care of each other the way folks do out on the trail, and if everyone approached each day with as much hope and optimism as hikers do, the world would be a better place.” – Jon Tullis
89. “You lift your head, you’re on your way, but really just to be walking, to be out of doors. That’s it, that’s all, and you’re there. Outdoors is our element: the exact sensation of living there.” – Frédéric Gros
90. “I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm.” – John Mackey
91. “There are a lot of stories out there, waiting for you to live them” – Unknown
92. “Screw the map – travel and get lost!” – Unknown
93. “The old school of thought would have you believe that you’d be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn’t what being in nature is all about. Rather, it’s about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization—not bringing them with us.” – Ryel Kestenbaum
94. “Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old.” ― Aldo Leopold
95. “Why is it that I can’t be content to live a normal life? Why do I spiral into depression when I am away from the wilderness for too long?” ― Heather Anderson
96. “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.” — Glenn Clark
97. “Home is where the heart is, and my heart is wherever I am at the moment.” — Lily Leung
98. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” — Jawaharal Nehru
99. “If at some point you don’t ask yourself, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ then you’re not doing it right.” — Roland Gau
