Quote

Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.

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
Running
Sex
Two
Lies
Like
Approach
Remainder
Darkness
Rapids
Fun
Anticipation
Lying
Thrill
Half
Ecstasy
Bigs
Thirds

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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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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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
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Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.
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Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.
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I wait. Now the night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.
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New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?
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If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.
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Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
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The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
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Without courage, all other virtues are useless.
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Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.
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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
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A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.
Edward Abbey
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Once upon a time, I dreamed of becoming a great man. Later, a good man. Now, finally, I find it difficult enough and honor enough to be -- a man.
Edward Abbey
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Life is too tragic for sadness: Let us rejoice.
Edward Abbey
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A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
Edward Abbey
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A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.
Edward Abbey
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In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.
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
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We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
Edward Abbey