Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 22

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• 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

• Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

  Edward Abbey

  Joy, Survival, Doe

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.125, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

  Edward Abbey

  Economist, Turns, Cleaners

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.51, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.

  Edward Abbey

  Littles, Facts, Academic

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.51, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

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

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Suffering, Ancestor

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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Edward Abbey

  Long, Natural, Be Good

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

  4 Copy quote

• Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.

  Edward Abbey

  Yesterday, News, Newspapers

  "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.

  4 Copy quote

• There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline.

  Edward Abbey

  Artist, Decline, Trajectory

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

  5 Copy quote

• Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.

  Edward Abbey

  Style, Technique, Sake

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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Edward Abbey

  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.

  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

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Sports, Butterfly, Example

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

  4 Copy quote

• There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Two, Democracy

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Edward Abbey

  Morning, Coffee, Night

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

  15 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

• The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners -- and the crude vulgarity of their way of life.

  Edward Abbey

  Democracy, Way, Rich

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

  4 Copy quote

• In the end, for all our differences and conflicts, most women and men share the same food, work, shelter, bed, life, joy, anguish, and fate. We need each other.

  Edward Abbey

  Fate, Men, Differences

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

  4 Copy quote

• Narrow-minded provincialism: Sad to say but true - I am more interested in the mountain lions of Utah, the wild pigs of Arizona, than I am in the fate of all the Arabs of Araby, all the Wogs of Hindustan, all the Ethiopes of Abyssinia.

  Edward Abbey

  Fate, Pigs, Utah

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.46, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce soon: nothing but words.

  Edward Abbey

  Talking, Pay, Accepting

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

  4 Copy quote

• The sense of justice springs from self-respect; both are coeval with our
  birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice; it usually takes
  twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it
  out of them.

  Edward Abbey

  Children, Spring, College

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

  5 Copy quote

• All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love -- and most of all, an audience!

  Edward Abbey

  Want, Rewards, Serious

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Edward Abbey

  Play, Tyrants, Example

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

  4 Copy quote

• John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing -- like a faery breath! -- upon the glass.

  Edward Abbey

  Passion, Beer, Men

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

  4 Copy quote

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