Table of Contents
Inspirational Hiking Quotes
1. "Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better." - Albert Einstein
2. "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, Appalachian Trail Record Holder
3. "After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value." - G.M. Trevelyan
4. "Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." - Henry David Thoreau
5. "The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
6. “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” - John Muir
7. "In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir
8. "If you’re going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
9. "If the average person walks about 913 miles per year, then we walked about three years of miles in five months!" - @campwalkalong thru-hikers' experience on the CDT
10. "They are able who think they are able." - Virgil
11. "To travel, to experience and learn: that is to live." - Tenzing Norgay
12. “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” - John Muir
13. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu
14. "My loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had. I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself." - Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir
15. "Catching those first views of layered mountains, endlessly folding over each other like a giant blue blanket, tears sprung unbidden to my eyes. I had made it. And though I was indeed alone, I felt as if I was in the best company in the world." - Thru-hiker, Chris "Rad" Carter, on the Katahdin summit AT2021
16. "Where the signposts end, the trail begins." - Marty Rubin
17. "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
18. "Carry as little as possible, but choose that little with care.” - Earl Shaffer
19. "Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy." - Hamlin Garland
20. "It was terrifying, yet exciting all at once. I was the wind, untethered and flowing. I went from living as a couch potato the entire 2020 year to sleeping under the stars every night, trekking across deserts, over mountains, through rivers and fire and snow." - Thru-hiker, Bill, at the Northern Terminus PCT2021
21. "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." - Aristotle
22. "Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person." - Yvon Chouinard
23. "You won, this time. But you are as big as you are ever going to get. And I’m still growing." - Sir Edmund Hillary
24. "If you face the rest of your life with the spirit you show on the trail, it will have no choice but to yield the same kind of memories and dreams." - Adrienne Hall, A Journey North: One Woman's Story of Hiking the Appalachian Trail
25. "Taking on this trek with my disabilities in mind, I never thought my body and mind could handle it. Over the past 5 months I have done a lot of crying and talking but I also learned to finally be comfortable with the silence, with being alone. I have developed healthy relationships with my body and my people." - Thru-hiker, Ginger “Babs” Slentz, at the Northern Terminus PCT2021
26. "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." - Beverly Sills
27. "I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it." - Cheryl Strayed: Wild
28. "Fall down seven times and stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
29. "When everything feels like an uphill struggle, Just think of the view from the top." - Anonymous
30. "So grateful for having a body that was able to walk all the way from Canada to Mexico - but also for the many great new people I’ve met along the way, the insane kindness and generosity I’ve experienced from strangers, the challenges that seemed too hard or daunting at times that I was able to push through and all the crazy experiences that only a thru-hike can bring." - Thru-hiker, Linnett Andersen, at the Southern Most Point CDT2021
31. “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” - Frank A. Clark
Funny Hiking Quotes
32. "Sleeping bags are the soft tacos of the bear world." - Bears
33. Bop Peoples (famous Appalachian Trail Angel) quotes from Reddit:
a. "Bob Peoples got bit by a zombie. The zombie turned human and started building switchbacks."
b. "Bob Peoples got bit by a rattlesnake. After 3 days of agonizing pain, the snake died."
c. "Bears hang Bob Peoples' bags."
34. “A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.” - Edward Abbey
35. "I have two doctors, my left leg and my right." - G.M. Trevelyan
36. “DEET is nature's cologne.” - Every Hiker
37. "Anywhere is 'within walking distance'." - Anonymous Hiker
38. "Nowhere but on the trail can you meet a stranger for ten minutes, then decide to share sleeping quarters the same night, but it seems to happen all the time w/ thru-hikers. We're down! - Thru-hiker, Mary Poppins, experience on the PCT
39. “If you turn left at the next logging road, he said, and walk a quarter of a mile, you come to a dock on a lake, with an air horn hanging off it. You honk the air horn, and someone comes and picks you up in a boat, and they take you to this place where there's pizza and showers and cold beer!” ― Lucy Letcher's (author) experience on the AT, The Barefoot Sisters Southbound
Hiking Puns
40. "I love hiking — I don’t take it for granite." - Anonymous
41. "I’m trying to mount-ain my distance." - Anonymous
42. "Slow down! Don’t you Everest?" - Anonymous
43. "There’s snow place like the mountains." - Anonymous
44. "Actions peak louder than words." - Anonymous
45. "I’m all a-boot that hiking life." - Anonymous
46. "Mountains aren’t just funny. They’re hill-areas." - Anonymous
Classic Hiking Quotes
47. "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
48. "Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise." - Carrie Latet
49. "Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken." - Frank Herbert
50. "A vagrant is everywhere at home." - Martial
51. "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 Whitman
52. "Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence." - Hermann Buhl
53. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” - Jack Kerouac
54. "The mountains are calling and I must go." - John Muir
55. "We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down." - Robert Sweetgall
56. "If the winter is too cold and the summer is too hot, you are not a hiker." - A Bitter Hiker
57. "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
58. "Anywhere is 'within walking distance'." - Anonymous Hiker
59. "Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street." - William Blake
60. "Walking is a man's best medicine." - Hippocrates
61. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
62. "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
63. "Leave the road, take the trails." – Pythagoras
64. "It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." – Sir Edmund Hillary
65. "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." - Beverly Sills
66. "Fall down seven times and stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
67. "And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul." - John Muir
68. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu
69. "Hike Your Own Hike." - Thru-Hiker
70. "Hiking’s not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty." – Sonja Yoerg
71. "We don’t stop hiking because we grow old, we grow old because we stop hiking." - Finis Mitchel
72. "The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot." – Werner Herzog
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