Quotes from Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Accept yourself: be yourself. That seems a good rule. But which self? Even the simplest of us are complicated enough.

I am glad The Worst Journey is coming out in Penguins: after all it is largely about penguins.

I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

Those Hut Point days, would prove some of the happiest of my life. Just enough to eat and keep warm, no more - no frills or trimmings: there is many a worse and more elaborate life...the luxuries of civilisation satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

We are a nation of shop keepers.

I for one, had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying - the little they know - it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on...

Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little over-cautious, while always there was a something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion

For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales and have it out with Amundsen and his men in some undefined fashion or other there and then. Such a mood could not and did not bear a moment's reflection; but it was natural enough. We had just paid the first instalment of the heart-breaking labour of making a path to the Pole; and we felt, however unreasonably, that we had earned the first right of way.

The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of friendship, as it is the only lasting cement of matrimony.

A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot before the other.

the luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

From the masthead one can see a few patches of open water in different directions, but the main outlook is the same scene of desolate hummocky pack.

And at the end, when Scott himself lay dying, he wrote to Mrs. Wilson: "I can do no more to comfort you, than to tell you that he died as he lived, a brave, true man—the best of comrades and staunchest of friends.

Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying.

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

Thus the Emperor penguin is compelled to undertake all kinds of hardships because his children insist on developing so slowly, very much as we are tied in our human relationships for the same reason. It is of interest that such a primitive bird should have so long a childhood.

The mind of a horse is a very limited concern, relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals our politicians in that he has little real intellect.

If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—of steel. And if you can't get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks. And of these there is ample evidence in diary. The man with the nerves gets things done but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. " Written about Scott in Chapter 6

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.