an easy ascent up the stairs. The

Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent

— William Butler Yeats

When I go to my health club, and it's in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy.…

— Malcolm Gladwell

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 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

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

— A.W. Tozer

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

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

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

— George Crook

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

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

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 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

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 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