My Midsummer Morning Quotes

“As adults, we rarely learn fresh skills or dare ourselves to change direction. We urge our children to be bold risk-takers, to show grit and open themselves to new experiences. We encourage them to try things like learning musical instruments. But us grown-ups? We hide behind the way we’ve always done things. We become so boring! Adults are ashamed to be novices, and so we shy away from it. We draw comfort from being competent, even in narrow and unchanging niches. So we plateau and settle for the identity we have. We don’t stretch ourselves because that risks failure and pain. In fact, it guarantees it, for the pain of being stretched is how we grow. You are vulnerable when you begin something new because you are exposing your weaknesses. I had not been so incompetent for decades. I was surprised to realise that it delighted me.”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“I now believe there is something even more important than striving for the remarkable. And that is to stop dreaming about an adventure of a lifetime, and instead pursue a lifetime of living adventure through a daily pledge to push myself a little, scare myself now and then and remain curious”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“It is easy to begin but hard to stick at, which is why I respect anyone who has completed a long hike. You learn a lot, someone, by hiking in the hills”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“I am more at peace with myself and the world when I spend an extended period outdoors”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“The life that I could still live, I should live and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“When you travel, the world comes real and three-dimensional, impossibly vivid”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“God, it was a relief to let go of what I thought I should be. To just accept who I actually was, vulnerabilities and all. I”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“But I was too hungry to think very deeply. I looked around the plaza, weighing up my chances, and rubbed the bow with rosin to give it grip. You need friction to play beautiful notes.”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“It is normal nowadays to spend most of our lives inside, temperature-controlled, light-switched, water-softened, air-freshened and double-glazed. We have become like babies in incubators, unable to survive in the world. I only sense the sterility of this when my situation is reversed and I spend so much time outside that going in feels strange once more. I am more at peace with myself and the world when I spend an extended period outdoors.”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure

“but he saved me.”
― Alastair Humphreys, My Midsummer Morning: Rediscovering a Life of Adventure