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

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
Reflection
Joy
Century
Food
Age
Heartache
Human
Eighteen
Humans
Acquired
Enough
Provide

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Books are like eggs -- best when fresh.
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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.
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We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
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The rebel is doomed to a violent death. The rest of us can look forward to sedated expiration in a coma inside an oxygen tent, with tubes inserted in every bodily orifice.
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The hawk's cry is as sharp as its beak.
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My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.
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Every moment is precious. And precarious.
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Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.
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England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country.
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The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
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Don't talk to me about other worlds, separate realities, lost continents or invisible realms -- I know where I belong. Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
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When I write paradise I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.
Edward Abbey
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One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.
Edward Abbey
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A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.
Edward Abbey
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To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?
Edward Abbey
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If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey