Many Happy Returns

In such a world, violent, angry, and tired, Wilson sets a standard of faith and work. In a world which destroys itself and beauty, desperately and impotently desiring peace, he helps ...

We have missed him ever since he died. But you must find him: his voice, it is a quiet voice, is for those who listen ...

Wilson's idea was forgetfulness of self. By putting that idea into action as well as in contemplation, and in suffering, by the time he started on our Winter Journey he had reached another plateau which is round no earthly Pole, where he was beyond ambition and beyond fear. He had the quiet mind. That feeling he could communicate to others. ...

Glory? He knew it for a bubble: he had proved himself to himself. He was not worrying about glory. Power? He had power. ...

Wilson was convinced he would come home: that he had more work to do. And indeed he had. Is it not remarkable what such a man can do not only when he is alive but also after his death? That is the power which lasts for good. ... Such a man is followed willingly, and quite literally, to the uttermost ends of the earth. ...

It is not in my power to put him into that stream of thought which runs like a thread of gold through the more hopeful side of history and religion, and leads through happiness, sorrow and much pain to beauty – beauty without any bitterness at all.

— Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Postscript to The Worst Journey in the World

Happy 141st birthday, Bill.