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Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 20

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

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.

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.

Ordinary, Logic, Inference

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

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

Practice, Dueling, Might

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

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.

Crazy, Heart, Adventure

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

Ridiculous, Tragic

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

The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?)

Running, Book, East

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.

Dream, Suffering, Ancestor

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

I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.

Long, Natural, Be Good

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.29, RosettaBooks

Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.

Dog, Tick, Critics

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

Play, Tyrants, Example

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.35, RosettaBooks

Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things; for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead; symmetrical but stiff.

Sports, Butterfly, Example

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws. It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Soul, Ruins, World

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die.

Country, Home, Men

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

I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.

Cowboy, World Literature, Certain

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world.

Lonely, Heart, Blood

"A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

Art, Inspire, Nature And Life

"The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West". Book by Edward Abbey ("Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge", p. 57), 1977.

I wouldn't trade a good horse for the best Rolls-Royce ever made -- unless I could trade the Rolls for two good horses.

Horse, Two, Rolls Royce

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

Human Nature, Social, Institutions

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

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

Dog, Good Life, Life Is

Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.

Latin, Government, America

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

I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.

Sloth, Heroic, Enterprise

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

A mother's sorrow is more true, honorable, and beautiful than the detachment of the sage.

Beautiful, Mother, Sorrow

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

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.

Dark, Night, May

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

Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind.

Believe, Mind, Ghost

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

I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife.

Hate, Philosophy, School

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

Cold morning on Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, build fire in old stove. Second, start coffee. Then, heat up last night's pork chops and spinach for breakfast. Why not? And why the hell not?

Morning, Coffee, Night

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

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