As you may have realised if you’ve read any of our other posts, we’re a bit obsessed with hiking! Barely a day goes by where we’re not planning our next adventure, and it usually consists of an epic trail.
We love hiking for so many reasons: to reconnect with nature, to challenge ourselves, to see places that require endurance and perseverance, and to free our minds of the busyness of modern life. It’s a passion that has now become a lifestyle.
We’ve put together our 100 favourite hiking quotes from those who inspire us. I hope their words inspire you to explore the forests, mountains and wild places that make life so special.
100 Inspiration Hiking Quotes
“Walking is a man’s best medicine”
- Hippocrates
“Hiking and happiness go hand in hand or foot in boot.”
- Diane Spicer
“Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.”
- Jaime Lyn Beatty
“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
“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
“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
- Albert Einstein
“Carry as little as possible, but choose that little with care.”
- Earl Shaffer
“Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise.”
- Carrie Latet
"I found far more answers in the woods than I ever did in the city."
- Mary Davis
“You need special shoes for hiking… and a bit of a special soul as well”
- Emme Woodhull-Bache
“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
“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“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
“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
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
- John Muir
“The higher you climb on the mountain, the harder the wind blows.”
- Sam Cummings
“Not all who wander are lost”
- JRR Tolkien
“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”
- Beverly Sills
“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”
- Edward Abbey
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
- John Muir
“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.”
- Edward Abbey
“Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.”
- Sir Martin Conway
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous.”
- Aristotle
“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”
- Rosalia de Castro
“If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.”
- Raymond Inmon
“Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints.”
– Frédéric Gros
“A walk in nature, walks the soul back home.”
- Mary Davis
“I love walking in the woods, along the trails, by the beaches. I love being part of nature. I love walking alone. It is therapy. One needs to be alone, to recharge one’s batteries.”
- Grace Kelly
“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
- Ed Viesturs
“You, who know that all the bruises and scrapes from scrambling and rambling are the best because they remind you of being alive.”
- Madison Perrins
“When we walk into a grove of trees or under an open sky the magic of nature takes over and the heaviness of life lifts a little.’
- Natassia Cassinero
“The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain he is inspired by it.”
- William Arthur Ward
“I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm.”
- John Mackey
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
- Rachel Carson
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown for going out, I found, was really going in.”
- John Muir
“We don’t stop hiking because we grow old. We grow old because we stop hiking.”
- Finis Mitchell
“To walk in nature is to witness a thousand miracles.”
- Mary Davis
“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
- Edmund Hillary
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
- Greg Child
“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
- Anatoli Boukreev
“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
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
- John Muir
“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
“It’s not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves.”
- Edmund Hillary
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
- Gary Snyder
“After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.”
- G.M Trevelyan
The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.”
- John Muir
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed and to have my sense put in order.”
- John Burroughs
"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
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than trees.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
- John Muir
“The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot”
- Werner Herzog
“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“You were made to soar, to crash to earth, then to rise and soar again.”
- Alfred Wainwright
“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”
- Hermann Buhl
“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
- Frank A. Clark
“I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie,
and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.”
- Daniel J. Rice
“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
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
- John Muir
“We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down.”
- Robert Sweetgall
"Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street."
- William Blake
“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
“I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
– Robert Frost
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”
- T.S. Eliot
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
”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
“Deep down, at the molecular heart of life, the trees, and we are essentially identical.”
– Carl Sagan
“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
“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
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
– Aldous Huxley
“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
“There is, of course, a deep spiritual need which the pilgrimage seems to satisfy, particularly for those hardy enough to tackle the journey on foot.”
– Edwin Mullins
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
- Lao Tzu
“Hiking’s not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty.”
– Sonja Yoerg
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
- Robert Frost
“Remember to look up to the stars, not down to your feet.”
- Stephen Hawking
“In the woods we return to reason and faith.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Go out, go out I beg of you And taste the beauty of the wild. Behold the miracle of the earth with all the wonder of a child.”
- Edna Jaques
“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.”
- George Washington Carver
“The hills have a power to soothe and heal which is their very own.
No man ever sat alone on the top of a hill and planned a murder or a robbery, and no man ever came down from the hills without feeling in some way refreshed, and the better for his experience.”
- Alfred Wainwright
“It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.”
- Henry Ward Beecher
“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
“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
”There is always an adventure waiting in the woods.”
- Katelyn S. Bolds
“The more civilized man becomes, the more he needs and craves a great background of forest wildness, to which he may return like a contrite prodigal from the husks of an artificial life.”
- Ellen Burns Sherman
“The hardest mountain to climb is the one within”.
- J. Lynn
“Nature is one of the most underutilized treasures in life. It has the power to unburden hearts and reconnect to that inner place of peace.”
- Dr. Janice Anderson & Kiersten Anderson
"Mountains teach that not everything in this world can be rationally explained."
- Aleksander Lwow
“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than what we could learn from books."
- John Lubbock
“Stop following others and create your own path in life.”
- Dani Jay
“Happiness walks on busy feet.”
- Kitte Turmell
“Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.”
– Brooke Hampton
If you love the mountains, we’ve got even more inspiration from your favourite writers and mountaineers.
This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, that we will earn a small commission if you click through and decide to make a purchase. This helps towards the costs of running our website. :-)
Like it? Pin it!
Follow us on social media
What is your favourite hiking quote? What inspires you to go into the outdoors? Let us know in the comments below!
