Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 25

Quotes about:

• Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person.

  Edward Abbey

  Too Late, Honest, Should

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.53, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.

  Edward Abbey

  Life, Business, Book

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• What is reason? Knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of
  love.

  Edward Abbey

  Arms, Reason

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

  4 Copy quote

• Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.

  Edward Abbey

  Moving, Agreement, Voice

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.36, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.

  Edward Abbey

  Lying, Book, Writing

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.36, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.

  Edward Abbey

  Civilization, Names, Worthy

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.23, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• There has never been an 'original' sin: each is quite banal.

  Edward Abbey

  Sin, Original Sin, Originals

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.24, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.

  Edward Abbey

  Communication, Writing, Winter

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

  6 Copy quote

• Life imitates art -- but badly.

  Edward Abbey

  Art

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.25, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining.

  Edward Abbey

  Speaks Out, Shopping, Rivers

  Edward Abbey (1988). “One Life at a Time, Please”, p.172, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.

  Edward Abbey

  Byzantium, Oklahoma, One Day

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

  5 Copy quote

• Life is cruel? Compared to what?

  Edward Abbey

  Life Is

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

  4 Copy quote

• Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.

  Edward Abbey

  Law, Space, Alaska

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.57, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

  Edward Abbey

  Business, Government, Self

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.21, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

• I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.

  Edward Abbey

  Simple, Facts, Kind

  "The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader".

  4 Copy quote

• I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.

  Edward Abbey

  Way, Resistance, Unnecessary

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

  4 Copy quote

• I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

  Edward Abbey

  Men, Numbers, America

  "The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West". Book by Edward Abbey ("The Crooked Wood", p. 208), 1977.

  6 Copy quote

• The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

  Edward Abbey

  Symphony, Shostakovich, Form

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.40, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Opera: I like it, except for all those howling sopranos and caterwauling tenors. (Why can't tenors sing like men?)

  Edward Abbey

  Men, Opera, Sopranos

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything -- while the music lasts.

  Edward Abbey

  Believe, Listening, Lasts

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?

  Edward Abbey

  Nutcrackers, Reincarnation

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

  15 Copy quote

• I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.

  Edward Abbey

  Believe, Hopeful, Happy Endings

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

  4 Copy quote

• Music endures and ages far better than books. Books, made of words, are unavoidably attached to ideas, events, conflict, and history, but music has the power to transcend time. At least for a time. Palestrina sounds as fresh today as he did in 1555, but Dante, only three centuries older, already smells of the archaic, the medieval, the catacombs.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Ideas, Smell

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.

  Edward Abbey

  Symphony, Perfect, Strive

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.

  Edward Abbey

  Couple, Needs, May

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.43, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

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