Quote

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

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
Tree
Miles
Books
Deeds
Written
Brave
Living
Sacrifice
Mile
Ever
Hundred
Deed
Book
Worth
Square
Great
Thousand
Squares
Would
Single
Desert

More quotes by Edward Abbey

Image
The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.
Edward Abbey
Image
Grown men do not need leaders.
Edward Abbey
Image
In the dog-eat-dog economy, the Doberman is boss.
Edward Abbey
Image
I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.
Edward Abbey
Image
Are people more important than the grizzly bear? Only from the point of view of some people.
Edward Abbey
Image
And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.
Edward Abbey
Image
Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
Edward Abbey
Image
In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)
Edward Abbey
Image
Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.
Edward Abbey
Image
It is not enough to understand the natural world the point is to defend and preserve it.
Edward Abbey
Image
Life: another day, another dolor.
Edward Abbey
Image
If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dream.
Edward Abbey
Image
Guns don't kill people people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature they distort it.
Edward Abbey
Image
Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.
Edward Abbey
Image
Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.
Edward Abbey
Image
What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead symmetrical but stiff.
Edward Abbey