Welcome to the largest and best collection of hiking quotes on the internet!
Not only that, you will find many quotes placed on beautiful photos, perfect for sharing on pinterest or instagram. Feel free to use any of them you want!
Whether you’re trying to find your inspiration or you just love a good quote, you’ll find it all here for your personal enjoyment or sharing.
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
John Muir
“I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.“
Wislawa Szymborska
“Carry as little as possible, but choose that little with care.”
Earl Shaffer
“The higher you climb on the mountain, the harder the wind blows.”
Sam Cummings
“The best view comes after the hardest climb.”
Anonymous hiking quotes
“The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal.
Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits.
These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.”
Alfred Wainwright
“You need mountains, long staircases don’t make good hikers.”
Amit Kalantri
“You Can’t Climb Up A Mountain, With Downhill Thoughts.”
Anonymous hiking quotes
“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”
Hermann Buhl
“If the winter is too cold and the summer is too hot, you are not a hiker.”
Anonymous hiking quotes
“Walking is a man’s best medicine.”
Hippocrates
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
John Muir
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Lao Tzu
“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein
“Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this;
the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf?
This is something to be lived, not read about. “
Alfred Wainwright
“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Frank A. Clark
“I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.”
G.M. Trevelyan
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.“
John Muir
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Aristotle
“Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise.”
Carrie Latet
“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
Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.
Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
John Muir
“When everything feels like an uphill struggle, Just think of the view from the top.”
Anonymous hiking quotes
“The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain, he is inspired by it.”
William Arthur Ward
“Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
Richard Nixon
“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
“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
“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”
Robert W. Service
“To travel, to experience and learn: that is to live.”
Tenzing Norgay
“The long distance hiker, a breed set apart, From the likes of the usual pack,
He’ll shoulder his gear, be hittin’ the trail; Long gone, long ‘fore he’ll be back.”
M.J. Eberhart
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
Greg Child
“You won, this time. But you are as big as you are ever going to get. And I’m still growing.”
Sir Edmund Hillary (first to summit Mount Everest, quoted after his first failed attempt)
“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
“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
Henry David Thoreau
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing”
Aldous Huxley
“DEET is nature’s cologne.”
Anonymous Hiking Quotes
“We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down.”
Robert Sweetgall
“Hike Your Own Hike.”
Unknown Thru-Hiker
“I found far more answers in the woods than I ever did in the city.”
Mary Davis
“Hiking is the best workout! You can hike for three hours and not even realize you’re working out. And, hiking alone lets me have some time to myself.”
Jamie Luner
“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
Ansel Adams
“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
“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.”
Frank Herbert
“You need special shoes for hiking… and a bit of a special soul as well”
Emme Woodhull-Bache
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
Beverly Sills
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
John Muir
“Hiking and happiness go hand in hand or foot in boot.”
Diane Spicer
“Sleeping bags are the soft tacos of the bear world.”
Bears
“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”
Edward Abbey
“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
Anatoli Boukreev
“Fall down seven times and stand up eight.”
Japanese Proverb
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.”
William Blake
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill
“Not all who wander are lost”
JRR Tolkien
“Wilderness is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit.”
Edward Abbey
“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
“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
“Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.”
Jaime Lyn Beatty
“A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.”
Edward Abbey
“On a hike, the days pass with the wind, the sun, the stars; movement is powered by a belly full of food and water, not a noxious tankful of fossil fuels.
On a hike, you’re less a job title and more a human being. A periodic hike not only stretches the limbs, but also reminds us: Wow, there’s a big old world out there.”
Ken Ilgunas
“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
Khalil Gibran
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
Henry David Thoreau
“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”
Helen Keller
“Choose only one master—nature.”
Rembrandt
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
Lao Tzu
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“A walk in nature walks the soul back home.”
Mary Davis
“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you are climbing it.”
Andy Rooney
“After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.”
G.M. Trevelyan
“You’re off to great places, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.”
Dr. Seuss
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
Gary Snyder
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”
John Burroughs
“Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.”
John Muir
“Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.”
Sir Martin Conway
“To walk in nature is to witness a thousand miracles.”
Mary Davis
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
John Muir
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Rachel Carson
“Leave the road, take the trails.”
Pythagoras
“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
Charlotte Eriksson
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
Leigh Hunt
“Anywhere is ‘within walking distance’.”
Anonymous Hiking Quotes
“That’s the difference between backpackers and holiday makers. The former can’t help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it.”
Harry Whitewolf
“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
“I don’t know where I’m going, but I promise it won’t be boring”
David Bowie
“Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.”
Eckhart Tolle
“When I travel, people say ‘Yet another place in this world’. But I see another world inside every place I go”
Vivek Thangaswamy
“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
“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
“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
Sir Edmund Hillary
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
Gill Puckridge
“I refuse to let this suffering be for nothing. In fact, I refuse to suffer.” I whispered to myself as I pushed each tent stake into the ground. “I can adapt. I am adapting.” Another long day was done and I was forty-two miles closer to Canada.”
Heather “Anish” Anderson
“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”
Aldo Leopold
“The trail was designed to have no end, a wild place on which to be comfortably lost for as long as one desired.”
Ben Montgomery
“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
“Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.”
Aldo Leopold
“…ten thousand years ago, human beings were migrant—we were like the birds. The average human would see only about a hundred people in her lifetime and would know each one profoundly, deeply bonded. Today, humans in cities will see a hundred beings in just minutes, naming them strangers, a dehumanizing designation.”
Aspen Matis
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
Toni Morrison
“”A vagrant is everywhere at home.”
Martial
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.”
Isaac Newton
“Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.”
Aldo Leopold
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path & leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Editor’s note: this quote is metaphorical, don’t take it literally when you’re hiking. Please stay on existing trails and don’t create new ones.
“Being able to smell the fresh air and disconnect from the news and your phone—there’s nothing like it.”
Jason Ward
“If you think you’ve peaked, find a new mountain.”
Anonymous Hiking Quotes
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’ “
Syliva Plath
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”
Swedish proverb
“I think Nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never gonna let us relax!”
Richard Feynman
“Land really is the best art.”
Andy Warhol
“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.”
Alice Walker
“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.”
Claude Monet
“They are able who think they are able.”
Virgil
“We don’t stop hiking because we grow old. We grow old because we stop hiking.”
Finis Mitchell
“For hiking is one of those things that you can only do when you have the determination in you.”
Anonymous Hiking Quotes
Final Thoughts
Hiking quotes can inspire you when you need some motivation. But they can also feed your passion for hiking even if you’re already motivated to hike.
Just knowing that other people, including some very famous and important people, felt the way you do about hiking and nature helps you know that what you’re doing is worth doing.
So you like hiking? Are you sure you’re doing it right? Make sure you check out my free guide to hiking most efficiently and finding the best hikes: Hiking Secrets. Click here for a free copy!
If you’re planning a camping trip any time soon, you really should check out The Most Comfortable Way to Sleep in a Tent! It’s full of useful stuff to help you get better sleep when camping.
