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When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

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
Playful
Desperate
Late
Serious
Situation

More quotes by 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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Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County: any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble.
Edward Abbey
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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
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All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.
Edward Abbey
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Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
Edward Abbey
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)
Edward Abbey
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Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.
Edward Abbey
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Grown men do not need leaders.
Edward Abbey
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I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.
Edward Abbey
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The result of this bestial lust is an indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of all of my energies- wanting all, I accomplish nothing desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.
Edward Abbey
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Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!
Edward Abbey
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The ideal kitchen-sink novel: Throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Then add the kitchen sink.
Edward Abbey
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Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.
Edward Abbey
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When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.
Edward Abbey
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Home is where, when you have to go there, you probably shouldn't.
Edward Abbey
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Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
Edward Abbey
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All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders. Remaining silent about the destruction of nature is an endorsement of that destruction.
Edward Abbey
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Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
Edward Abbey