THE DESCENT SEEMED faster than the ascent: standard in…

The ascent of any route begins, in dreams at least, the autumn before. Our minds ring, involuntarily, with the alluring names of mountains, aiguilles,…

— Gaston Rebuffat

Without shedding of blood there is no anything. Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by selfsacrifice. Our race has marked every…

— Lucy Maud Montgomery

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that…

— Carl Jung

The member of a culture ... purposely avoids the relationship of intimacy; he wants the object somehow depicted and fictionalized. ... He is embarrassed…

— Richard M. Weaver

The real goal of a spiritual tradition should not be ascent, but openness, vulnerability, and this does not require great experiences but, on the…

— Morris Berman

As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it.…

— David Steindl-Rast

The growth of all the plants of the garden from seeds and roots keep us mindful, in accordance with of the Parable of the…

— John Stokes

There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

I at once commenced the ascent through a shower of arrows.

— George Crook

Sometimes, when I get a good picture, it feels like I have taken another nervous step into increasingly rarified air. Each good-news picture, no…

— Sally Mann

The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power: but the…

— Edward Gibbon

“Any movement toward Christ is ascent, and any direction away from Him is down.”

— A.W. Tozer

How much time, creative energy, and emotion do we expend resisting change because we assume growth must always be painful? Much personal growth is…

— Sarah Ban Breathnach

The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz.,…

— Willard Van Orman Quine

Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.

— Dean Koontz