"At the bottom of the fall we were able to stand again on dry land. The rope could not be recovered. We had flung down the adze from the top of the fall and also the logbook and the cooker wrapped in one of our blouses. That was all, except our wet clothes, that we brought out of the Antarctic, which we had entered a year and a half before with well-found ship, full equipment, and high hopes. That was all of tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had "suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders." We had reached the naked soul of man."

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“Ernest Shackleton describing his 1908 South Pole Expedition”

“The outstanding feature of today’s march is that we have seen new land to the South never seen by human eyes before great snow clad heights we did not see on our journey South on the last Expedition for we were too close to the land or rather foothills and now at the great distance we are out they can plainly be seen.”

“Photo by Philip Brocklehurst : Ernest Shackleton and dogs on Nimrod back from expedition to reach Antarctica”

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“Better a live donkey than a dead lion.”

“Sir Ernest Shackleton at Athy Heritage Centre Museum”

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