Jeremy Gillies

I do not think there can be any life quite so demon­stra­tive of char­ac­ter as that which we had on these expe­di­tions. One sees a remark­able reas­sort­ment of val­ues. Under ordi­nary con­di­tions it is so easy to carry a point with a lit­tle bounce; self-assertion is a mask which cov­ers many a weak­ness. As a rule we have nei­ther the time nor the desire to look beneath it, and so it is that com­monly we accept peo­ple on their own val­u­a­tion. Here the out­ward show is noth­ing, it is the inward pur­pose that counts. So the ‘gods’ dwin­dle and the hum­ble sup­plant them. Pre­tence is useless.

At the heart of all beauty lies some­thing inhu­man, and these hills, the soft­ness of the sky, the out­line of these trees at this very minute lose the illu­sory mean­ing with which we had clothed them, hence­forth more remote than a lost par­adise … that dense­ness and that strange­ness of the world is absurd.

Until one is com­mit­ted, there is hes­i­tancy, the chance to draw back, always inef­fec­tive­ness, con­cern­ing all acts of ini­tia­tive and cre­ation. There is one ele­men­tary truth, the igno­rance of which kills count­less ideas and splen­did plans: that the moment one com­mits one­self, then Prov­i­dence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never oth­er­wise have occurred. A whole stream events issues from the decision.

If you can’t explain your ideas to your grand­mother in terms that she under­stands, you don’t know your sub­ject well enough

The suc­cess of the mas­ter­pieces seems to lie not so much in their free­dom from faults—indeed we tol­er­ate the gross­est errors in them all—but in the immense per­sua­sive­ness of a mind which has com­pletely mas­tered its perspective

We should be muck­ing about all the time, because muck­ing about is enjoy­ing life for its own sake, now, and not in prepa­ra­tion for an imag­i­nary future. It’s obvi­ous that the mirth-filled man, the cheer­ful soul, the child­ish adult is the one who has least to fear from life.

Human sub­tlety will never devise an inven­tion more beau­ti­ful, more sim­ple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inven­tions, noth­ing is lack­ing and noth­ing is superfluous.

One should always have a def­i­nite objec­tive in a walk, as in life it is so much more sat­is­fy­ing to reach a tar­get by per­sonal effort than to wan­der aim­lessly. An objec­tive is an ambi­tion, and life with­out ambi­tion is … well, aim­less wandering.

To me, it’s really so sim­ple, that life should be lived on the edge. You have to exer­cise rebel­lion. To refuse to tape your­self to the rules, to refuse your own suc­cess, to refuse to repeat your­self, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true chal­lenge. Then you will live your life on the tightrope.