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Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?

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
Desire
Without
Buddha
Delight
Cause
Causes
Suffering

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There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.
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The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.
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Mexico: where life is cheap, death is rich, and the buzzards are never unhappy.
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Home is where, when you have to go there, you probably shouldn't.
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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.
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I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.
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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.
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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.
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The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.
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Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person.
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The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art and (2) sedition.
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The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.
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What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'
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Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.
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All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.
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A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
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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.
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Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.
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Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position.
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I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.
Edward Abbey