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Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 9

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

Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.

Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.

Museums, World Literature, Pay

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

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Thinking, Thinking Alike

Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.

Character, Parent, Looks

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

Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.

Fashion, Communication, Nerves

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

The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.

Journey, Blue, Space

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

The function of football, soccer, basketball and other passion-sports in modern industrial society is the transference of boredom, frustration, anger and rage into socially acceptable forms of combat. A temporary substitute for war; for nationalism; identification with something bigger than the self.

Basketball, Soccer, Sports

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.

Home, Animal, Cities

Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.126, Simon and Schuster

There's nothing so obscene and depressing as an American Christmas.

Depressing, Obscene

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

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.

Dream, Real, Fall

Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea.

Song, Eye, Sea

Edward Abbey (1996). “The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader”, p.40, Macmillan

I've wrecked and ravaged half my life in the pursuit of women, and I suffer the pangs of about seventeen regrets -- the seventeen who got away.

Regret, Suffering, Half

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

The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.

War, Technology, Dachau

"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.

In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.

Men, Race, Brain

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

By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.

Reflection, Heartache, Joy

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

If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

Lying, Heart, Men

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

Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game

Baseball, Opportunity, Games

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.38, RosettaBooks

The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.

Nature, Human Nature, Domination

Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.44, Macmillan

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

Nature, Flower, Long

Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.

Wrath, Lust, Next

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

Preacher to me: 'A dollar for the Lord, brother?' Me to preacher: 'That's all right, I'm headed his way. I'll give it to him when I see him.'

Brother, Giving, Dollars

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

The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations.

Suicide, Sex, Availability

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

Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.

Games, Boredom, Despair

Be a half-assed crusader, a part-time fanatic. Don't worry to much about the fate of the world. Saving the world is only a hobby. Get out there and enjoy the world, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, husbands wives; climb mountains, run rivers, get drunk, do whatever you want to do while you can, before it's too late.

Running, Girlfriend, Husband

When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.

Country, Men, Rivers

Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness”

Generally speaking, it's a matter of only mild intellectual interest to me whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth. In fact, I don't care a rat's ass either way.

Intellectual, Earth, Care

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