Quotes from Robert Falcon Scott

The eternal silence of the great white desert. Cloudy columns of snow drift advancing from the south, pale yellow wraiths, heralding the coming storm, blotting out one by one the sharp-cut lines of the land.

Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing.

After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out, to see him still afar off. By this time we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski. I was first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes.

Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.

e are in a desperate state, feet frozen &c. No fuel and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation as to what we will do when we get to Hut Point.

It is always rather dismal work walking over the great snow plain when sky and surface merge in one pall of dead whiteness, but it is cheering to be in such good company with everything going on steadily and well.

The attitude of the men is equally worthy of admiration...there is a rush to be first when work is to be done, and the same desire to sacrifice selfish consideration to the success of the expedition...Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing.

Hunger and fear are the only realities in dog life: an empty stomach makes a fierce dog.

We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end.

But if we have been willing to give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honour of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for.

I fear we have shot our bolt - but we have been to Pole and done the longest journey on record.

The events of the day's march are now becoming so dreary and dispiriting that one longs to forget them when we camp; it is an effort even to record them in a diary.

But we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. I regret only for the women we leave behind.

The dog is almost human in its demand for living interest, yet fatally less than human in its inability to foresee.

The dog lives for the day, the hour, even the moment.

Each man in his way is a treasure.

Certainly dog driving is the most terrible work one has to face in this sort of business.

With great care we might have a dog's chance, but no more.