Quote

Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you.

Edward Abbey

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Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Language
Quotations
Reality
Slip
Trying
Beware
Something
Marks
Always
Slips
Mark
Writer
Encloses
Word
Quotation

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom because we like the smell of danger.
Edward Abbey
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Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.
Edward Abbey
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Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers -- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.
Edward Abbey
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If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
Edward Abbey
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We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races -- by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character.
Edward Abbey
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Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.
Edward Abbey
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What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
Edward Abbey
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The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.
Edward Abbey
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It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will?
Edward Abbey
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Roosters: The cry of the male chicken is the most barbaric yawp in all of nature.
Edward Abbey
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For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.
Edward Abbey
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I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.
Edward Abbey
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Girls: I never wanted them all. Just all the ones I wanted.
Edward Abbey
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Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.
Edward Abbey
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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
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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.
Edward Abbey