Ernest Shackleton Quotes

#1. Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

Ernest Shackleton

#2. From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made.

Ernest Shackleton

#3. Through endurance we conquer.

Ernest Shackleton

#4. Loneliness is the penalty of leadership, but the man who has to make the decisions is assisted greatly if he feels that there is no uncertainty in the minds of those who follow him, and that his orders will be carried out confidently and in expectation of success.

Ernest Shackleton

#5. Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition.

Ernest Shackleton

#6. The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below.

Ernest Shackleton

#7. We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

Ernest Shackleton

#8. Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them. We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives dependent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made a mock of our puny efforts.

Ernest Shackleton

#9. Optimism is the true moral courage

Ernest Shackleton

#10. I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge ... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.

Ernest Shackleton

#11. After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeying - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea

Ernest Shackleton

#12. One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

Ernest Shackleton

#13. Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

Ernest Shackleton

#14. I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.

Ernest Shackleton

#15. Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.

Ernest Shackleton

#16. If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.

Ernest Shackleton

#17. After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.

Ernest Shackleton

#18. I had a dream when i was 22 that someday i would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till i came to one of the poles of the earth

Ernest Shackleton

#19. Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success.

Ernest Shackleton

#20. Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last ... to the North Pole.

Ernest Shackleton

#21. I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

Ernest Shackleton

#22. I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

Ernest Shackleton

#23. I chose life over death for myself and my friends ... I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Ernest Shackleton

#24. When things are easy, I hate it.

Ernest Shackleton

#25. Optimism is true moral courage.

Ernest Shackleton

#26. If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going.

Ernest Shackleton

#27. A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.

Ernest Shackleton

#28. By endurance we conquer.

Ernest Shackleton

#29. No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man

Ernest Shackleton

#30. I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.

Ernest Shackleton