Quote

The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.

Edward Abbey

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Makes
Available
Inferno
Nature
Silent
Bearable
Mountain
Complement
Civilization
Refuge
City
Mountains
Needed
Wilderness
Cities
Desert
Complements
Knowledge
Easily
Completes

More quotes by Edward Abbey

Image
A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.
Edward Abbey
Image
Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile.
Edward Abbey
Image
Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.
Edward Abbey
Image
Grown men do not need leaders.
Edward Abbey
Image
My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.
Edward Abbey
Image
To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
Edward Abbey
Image
All governments require enemy governments.
Edward Abbey
Image
There are no vacant lots in nature.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.
Edward Abbey
Image
The gurus come from the sickliest nation on earth to tell us how to live. And we pay them for it.
Edward Abbey
Image
I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.
Edward Abbey
Image
I must confess that I know nothing whatsoever about true underlying reality, never having met any.
Edward Abbey
Image
Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!
Edward Abbey
Image
Opera: I like it, except for all those howling sopranos and caterwauling tenors. (Why can't tenors sing like men?)
Edward Abbey
Image
Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.
Edward Abbey
Image
Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
The sense of justice springs from self-respect both are coeval with our birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice it usually takes twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it out of them.
Edward Abbey
Image
Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.
Edward Abbey