Welcome to On Verticality. This blog explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history. If you’re new here, a good place to start is the Theory of Verticality section or the Introduction to Verticality. If you want to receive updates on what’s new with the blog, you can use the Subscribe page to sign up. Thanks for visiting!
Click to filter posts by the three main subjects for the blog : Architecture, Flight and Mountains.
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home.”
-John Muir, Scottish naturalist and mountaineer, 1838-1914
“During my thirty-three hours on the Eiger I seemed to have been in a dreamland; not a dreamland of rich enjoyment, but a much more beautiful land where burning desires were translated into deeds.”
-Jürgen Wellenkamp, German mountaineer, 1930-1956.
“Mountaineering offers an emotional experience which cannot otherwise be reached.”
-George Mallory, English Mountaineer, 1886-1924.
“I have found beauty … I have soared, like a bird. Oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky, with the wind about me, blowing me like a feather.”
-Written by Ray Bradbury, American author, 1920-2012.
There's no sensation to compare with this. Suspended animation, a state of bliss. Can't keep my mind from the circling sky. Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I.
-David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, English songwriter and musician, born 1946.
“The union of altitude and solitude fills me with an arrogant sense of ownership. After all, the sky is my domain.”
-Philippe Petit, French high-wire artist, born 1949.
"On the summit, your soul becomes part of the mountain. It makes you feel alive."
-Nirmal “Nims” Purja, Nepalese mountaineer, born 1983.
“The honor of inventing the airplane cannot be assigned wholly to one man; like most other inventions, it is the product of many minds.”
-Richard Pearse, Kiwi inventor and aviator, 1877-1953.
“The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth. For centuries, highways had been deceiving us. They shape themselves to man’s needs and run from stream to stream.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer and aviator, 1900-1944.
“It is because [mountains] have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again.”
-Sir Francis Younghusband, British explorer and mountaineer, 1863-1942.
“The highest of mountains is capable of severity, a severity so awful and so fatal that the wiser sort of men do well to think and tremble even on the threshold of their high endeavour.”
-George Mallory, English Mountaineer, 1886-1924.
"[Getting to the top of Everest is] a matter of universal human endeavor, a cause from which there is no withdrawl, whatever losses it may demand."
-Günter O. Dyhrenfurth, German mountaineer and geologist, 1886-1975.
“Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished.”
-George Mallory, English mountaineer, 1886-1924.
“What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? It is of no use. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.”
-George Mallory, English mountaineer, 1886-1924.
"I wish that I could fly, into the sky, so very high, just like a dragonfly. I'd fly above the trees, over the seas, in all degrees, to anywhere I please."
-Lenny Kravitz, American singer & songwriter, born 1964.
“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
-From The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher, 1265-1321.
“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”
-John Muir, Scottish naturalist and mountaineer, 1838-1914
“Towers have always been erected by humankind - it seems to gratify humanity’s ambition somehow and they are beautiful and picturesque.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, 1867-1959
“It is impossible that men should be able to fly craftily by their own strength.”
-Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and mathematician, 1608-1679.
“A greater fear I do not think there was ... when I perceived myself on all sides in the air, and saw extinguished the sight of everything but the monster.”
-From The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher, 1265-1321.