Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 20

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• When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

  Edward Abbey

  Fear, Common Sense, Atheism

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.12, RosettaBooks

  20 Copy quote

• The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Tombstone, Sky

  Edward Abbey (1954). “Slumgullion stew: an Edward Abbey reader”, E P Dutton

  20 Copy quote

• Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. A few more wore red coats, a few wore blue coats, and the rest wore no coats at all. We never did figure out who won that war.

  Edward Abbey

  War, Blue, Coats

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.17, RosettaBooks

  6 Copy quote

• To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Mean, Self

  Edward Abbey (1996). “The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader”, p.166, Holt Paperbacks

  41 Copy quote

• How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Writing, Years

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.33, RosettaBooks

  6 Copy quote

• If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dream.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Tired, Loss

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.

  Edward Abbey

  Exercise, Energy, Sitting

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.16, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

• Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

  Edward Abbey

  Spiritual, Food, Cooking

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.16, RosettaBooks

  8 Copy quote

• When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.

  Edward Abbey

  Mean, Writing, Disease And Death

  "Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness". Book by Edward Abbey ("Down the River", p. 147), 1968.

  28 Copy quote

• Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?

  Edward Abbey

  Suffering, Desire, Delight

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.26, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

• Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)

  Edward Abbey

  Beautiful, Character, Way

  7 Copy quote

• In history-as-politics, the 'future' is that vacuum in time waiting to be filled with the antics of statesmen.

  Edward Abbey

  Waiting, Vacuums, Antics

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.17, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• A true conservative must necessarily be a conservationist.

  Edward Abbey

  Conservative

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

  4 Copy quote

• Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

  Edward Abbey

  Ordinary, Logic, Inference

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• We should restore the practice of dueling. It might improve manners around here.

  Edward Abbey

  Practice, Dueling, Might

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.15, RosettaBooks

  11 Copy quote

• We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Everyone needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. For the terror, freedom, and delirium. Because we need brutality and raw adventure, because men and women first learned to love in, under, and all around trees, because we need for every pair of feet and legs about ten leagues of naked nature, crags to leap from, mountains to measure by, deserts to finally die in when the heart fails.

  Edward Abbey

  Crazy, Heart, Adventure

  4 Copy quote

• All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.

  Edward Abbey

  Army, Hierarchy, Wells

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.17, RosettaBooks

  12 Copy quote

• The one great gift to humankind from our nuclear physicists has been the nuclear bomb. How can we ever thank them?

  Edward Abbey

  Nuclear, Bombs, Physicist

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Some lives are tragic, some ridiculous. Most are both at once.

  Edward Abbey

  Ridiculous, Tragic

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.27, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February.

  Edward Abbey

  Dark, Night, May

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it.

  Edward Abbey

  Human Nature, Social, Institutions

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.19, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.

  Edward Abbey

  Real, Book, Writing

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.37, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• The dog's life is a good life, for a dog.

  Edward Abbey

  Dog, Good Life, Life Is

  4 Copy quote

• The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t much matter whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.

  Edward Abbey

  Home, Journey, Keys

  "The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West". Book by Edward Abbey ("Walking", p. 205), 1977.

  8 Copy quote

• The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.

  Edward Abbey

  Gnarly, World, Metaphysical

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.9, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

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