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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

  Edward Abbey

  Fear, Military, War

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

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• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Soul, Ruins, World

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• The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.

  Edward Abbey

  Gnarly, World, Metaphysical

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.9, RosettaBooks

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• There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at last

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Enemy, Tools

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

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• Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

  Edward Abbey

  Passion, Speak, Melancholy

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

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• 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

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

  Edward Abbey

  Beautiful, Mother, Sorrow

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

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

  Edward Abbey

  Sloth, Heroic, Enterprise

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

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• 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

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• Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.

  Edward Abbey

  Beautiful, Writing, Silence

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

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• When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best.

  Edward Abbey

  Done, Second Best, Should

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

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• Susan Sontag: What she really wanted, throughout her career, was to grow up to be a Frenchman.

  Edward Abbey

  Growing Up, Careers, Grows

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

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• Edmund Wilson was our greatest American literary critic because he was more than a literary critic: He was a fearless, even radical judge of the society he lived in. (See, for example, _A Piece of My Mind_; _The Cold War and the Income Tax_; the introduction to _Patriotic Gore_.) Our conventional critics cannot forgive him for those scandalous lapses in good taste.

  Edward Abbey

  War, Patriotic, Judging

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• The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.

  Edward Abbey

  Real, Book, Writing

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.37, RosettaBooks

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• The world is what it is, no less and no more, and therein lies its entire and sufficient meaning.

  Edward Abbey

  Lying, World, Sufficient

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.48, RosettaBooks

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• Pure science is a myth: Both mathematical theoreticians like Albert Einstein and practical crackpots like Henry Ford dealt with different aspects of the same world.

  Edward Abbey

  Different, World, Aspect

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

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• The one great gift to humankind from our nuclear physicists has been the nuclear bomb. How can we ever thank them?

  Edward Abbey

  Nuclear, Bombs, Physicist

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

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• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Dark, Night, May

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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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