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Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 19

All Quotes Adventure Age Anarchy Appearance Army Art Atheism Atheist Beer Belief Business Challenges Character Children Coffee Common Sense Communication Country Critics Culture Democracy Desire Doubt Duty Dying Earth Evil Fate Fear Football Freedom Fun Funny Giving Grace Greed Growth Guru Hate Heart Heaven Hell Home Honor Human Nature Ideology Inspirational Jesus Journey Joy Laughter Liberty Life Love Lying Madness Metaphysics Military Nature Pain Passion Peace Philosophy Police Positive Pride Purpose Rain Reading Reality Regret Revolution Revolver Risk Running School Seven Silence Simplicity Sin Solitude Soul Sports Study Stupidity Suffering Survival Taxes Technology Terrorism Theology Tragedy Travel Virtue Waiting Wall Water Wilderness Wit Writing

Women: We cannot love them all. But we must try.

Women: We cannot love them all. But we must try.

Trying

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

Motherhood is an essential, difficult, and full-time job. Women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies.

Mother, Baby, Jobs

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.44, RosettaBooks

Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.

Mean, Greed, Sin

"A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal". Book by Edward Abbey (Chapter 11 "Money Et Cetera", p. 100), 1989.

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.

New York, Heart, Virginia

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.30, RosettaBooks

Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.

Favorite Hobby, Hobbies, World

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

One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.

Personality, Enough, States

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

Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

Stress, Long, Car

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.49, University of Arizona Press

Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.

Secret, Balance, World

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.233, University of Arizona Press

In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.

Philosophy, People, Earth

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.11, RosettaBooks

Within minutes my 115-mile walk through the desert hills becomes a thing apart, a disjunct reality on the far side of a bottomless abyss, immediately beyond physical recollection.But it's all still there in my heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days to come, like a treasure found and then, voluntarily, surrendered. Returned to the mountains with my blessing. It leaves a golden glowing on the mind.

Pain, Heart, Blessing

What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'

Jesus, Lasts, Checks

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

I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.

Night, Pie, Vision

Edward Abbey (1996). “The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader”, p.34, Macmillan

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.

Fear, Common Sense, Atheism

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

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

Best Place, Written, Good Place

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.56, RosettaBooks

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.

Dream, Tombstone, Sky

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

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.

War, Blue, Coats

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

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.

Dream, Mean, Self

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

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

Book, Writing, Years

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

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.

Dream, Tired, Loss

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

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.

Exercise, Energy, Sitting

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

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.

Spiritual, Food, Cooking

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

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.

Mean, Writing, Disease And Death

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

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

Suffering, Desire, Delight

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

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

Beautiful, Character, Way

A true conservative must necessarily be a conservationist.

Conservative

"A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

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