Background 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

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Come With Me, The

Edward Abbey

...

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.

Views: 30572

Topic

More From Edward Abbey

The Hawk's Cry Is As Sharp As Its Beak.

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

Some People Write To Please, To Soothe, To Console. Others To Provoke, To Challenge, To Exasperate And Infuriate. I've Always Found The Second Approach The More Pleasing.

The One Thing ... That Is Truly Ugly Is The Climate Of Hate And Intimidation, Created By A Noisy Few, Which Makes The Decent Majority Reluctant To Air In Public Their Views On Anything Controversial. ... Where All Pretend To Be Thinking Alike, It's Likely That No One Is Thinking At All.

I Wish To Be An Inspector Of Volcanoes. I Want To Study Cloud Formations And Memorize The Wind And Learn By Heart The Habits Of The Ponderosa Pine.

Water, Water, Water....there Is No Shortage Of Water In The Desert But Exactly The Right Amount , A Perfect Ratio Of Water To Rock, Water To Sand, Insuring That Wide Free Open, Generous Spacing Among Plants And Animals, Homes And Towns And Cities, Which Makes The Arid West So Different From Any Other Part Of The Nation. There Is No Lack Of Water Here Unless You Try To Establish A City Where No City Should Be.

In The American Southwest, I Began A Lifelong Love Affair With A Pile Of Rock.

I Now Find The Most Marvelous Things In The Everyday, The Ordinary, The Common, The Simple And Tangible.

We Can Have Wilderness Without Freedom; We Can Have Wilderness Without Human Life At All, But We Cannot Have Freedom Without Wilderness, We Cannot Have Freedom Without Leagues Of Open Space Beyond The Cities, Where Boys And Girls, Men And Women, Can Live At Least Part Of Their Lives Under No Control But Their Own Desires And Abilities, Free From Any And All Direct Administration By Their Fellow Men.

The Earth Is Real. Only A Fool, Milking His Cow, Denies The Cow's Reality.

Is There A God? Who Knows? Is There An Angry Unicorn On The Dark Side Of The Moon?

Great Art Is Indefinable But That's All Right; It Exists Anyway.

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

The Best American Writers Have Come From The Hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most Of Them Never Even Went To College.

For Women, The Sexual Act Is A Means To A Higher End. For A Man, It Is An End In Itself.

There Are Only Two Kinds Of Books -- Good Books And The Others. The Good Are Winnowed From The Bad Through The Democracy Of Time.

Belief In God? An Afterlife? I Believe In Rock: This Apodictic Rock Beneath My Feet.

Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

All Power Rests On Hierarchy: An Army Is Nothing But A Well-organized Lynch Mob.

Suicide: Don't Knock It If You Ain't Tried It.

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.

Representative Government Has Broken Down. Our Politicians Represent Not The People Who Vote For Them But The Commercial Interests Who Finance Their Election Campaigns. We Have The Best Politicians That Money Can Buy.

Whenever I See A Photograph Of Some Sportsman Grinning Over His Kill, I Am Always Impressed By The Striking Moral And Esthetic Superiority Of The Dead Animal To The Live One.

Congress Is Always Willing To Appropriate Money For More And Bigger Paved Roads, Anywhere -- Particularly If They Form Loops.

A Man Without A Horse Is Like A Man Without A Weapon: Stunted And Naked.

Wealth Should Come Like Manna From Heaven, Unearned And Uncalled For. Money Should Be Like Grace -- A Gift. It Is Not Worth Sweating And Scheming For.

Susan Sontag: What She Really Wanted, Throughout Her Career, Was To Grow Up To Be A Frenchman.

The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life Forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

What Is Truth? I Don't Know And I'm Sorry I Brought It Up.

A Man's Duty? To Be Ready -- With Rifle Or Rood -- To Defend His Home When The Showdown Comes.

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

I Always Write With My .357 Magnum Handy. Why? Well, You Never Know When God May Try To Interfere.

Women Who Love Only Women May Have A Good Point.

Nature, Like Maimonides Said, Is Mainly A Good Place To Throw Beer Cans On Sunday Afternoons.

Paradise Is The Here And Now, The Actual, Tangible, Dogmatically Real Earth On Which We Stand. Yes, God Bless America, The Earth Upon Which We Stand.

How Could Anything Non-controversial Be Of Intellectual Interest To Grown-ups?

When A Man's Best Friend Is His Dog, That Dog Has A Problem.

We Know This Apodictic Rock Beneath Our Feet. That Dogmatic Sun Above Our Heads. The World Of Dreams, The Agony Of Love And The Foresight Of Death. That Is All We Know. And All We Need To Know? Challenge That Statement.

When Guns Are Outlawed, Only The Government Will Have Guns. The Government - And A Few Outlaws. If That Happens, You Can Count Me Among The Outlaws.

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With A Turn Of The Ignition Key.

The Domination Of Nature Leads To The Domination Of Human Nature.

Most Of The Literary Classics Are Worth Reading, If You've Nothing Better To Do.

Going To Bed With Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, Or Margaret Thatcher: There Are Some Things One Prefers Neither To Do Nor To Have Done.

All Governments Need Enemies. How Else To Justify Their Existence?

I Know My Own Nation Best. That's Why I Despise It The Most. And Know And Love My Own People, Too, The Swine. I'm A Patriot. A Dangerous Man.

Our Big Social Institutions Do Not Reflect Human Nature; They Distort It.

One Man Alone Can Be Pretty Dumb Sometimes, But For Real Bona Fide Stupidity, There Ain't Nothing Can Beat Teamwork.

Despair Leads To Boredom, Electronic Games, Computer Hacking, Poetry And Other Bad Habits.

Nothing Could Be More Reckless Than To Base One's Moral Philosophy On The Latest Pronouncements Of Science.

The Death Penalty Would Be Even More Effective, As A Deterrent, If We Executed A Few Innocent People More Often.

The Love Of A Man For His Wife, His Child, Of The Land Where He Lives And Works, Is For Me The Real Meaning Of Mystical Experience.

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Doctrines Like Christianity Or Islam Or Marxism Require Unanimity Of Belief. One Dissenter Casts Doubt On The Creed Of Millions.

Wilderness. The Word Itself Is Music.

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

There Are Some Good Things To Be Said About Walking. Not Many, But Some. Walking Takes Longer, For Example, Than Any Other Known Form Of Locomotion Except Crawling. Thus It Stretches Time And Prolongs Life. Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed. I Have A Friend Who's Always In A Hurry; He Never Gets Anywhere. Walking Makes The World Much Bigger And Thus More Interesting. You Have Time To Observe The Details. The Utopian Technologists Foresee A Future For Us In Which Distance Is Annihilated... To Be Everywhere At Once Is To Be Nowhere Forever, If You Ask Me.

Motherhood Is An Essential, Difficult, And Full-time Job. Women Who Do Not Wish To Be Mothers Should Not Have Babies.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

Humankind Will Not Be Free Until The Last Kremlin Commissar Is Strangled With The Entrails Of The Last Pentagon Chief Of Staff.

I Wouldn't Trade A Good Horse For The Best Rolls-royce Ever Made -- Unless I Could Trade The Rolls For Two Good Horses.

Terrorism: Deadly Violence Against Humans And Other Living Things, Usually Conducted By Government Against Its Own People.

So I Lived Alone. The First Thing I Did Was Take Off My Pants. Naturally.

One Must Be Reasonable In One's Demands On Life. For Myself, All That I Ask Is: (1) Accurate Information; (2) Coherent Knowledge; (3) Deep Understanding; (4) Infinite Loving Wisdom; (5) No More Kidney Stones, Please.

Deep Understanding

Art, Science, Philosophy, Religion -- Each Offers At Best Only A Crude Simplification Of Actual Living Experience.

The New Age Orgy: The Flesh Was Willing But The Spirit's Weak.

But Of The Seven Deadly Sins, Wrath Is The Healthiest - Next Only To Lust.

Except For The Scale Of The Operation, There Was Nothing Unusual About Hitler's Massacre Of The Jews. Genocide's An Old Tradition, As Human As Mother Love Or Cherry Pie.

Civilization Is A Youth With A Molotov Cocktail In His Hand. Culture Is The Soviet Tank Or L.a. Cop That Guns Him Down.

Molotov Cocktail

Every Man Should Be His Own Guru; Every Woman Her Own Gurette.

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.

Somewhere In The Depths Of Solitude, Beyond Wilderness And Freedom, Lay The Trap Of Madness.

Why Must Love Always Be Accompanied--sooner Or Later--by Sorrow And Pain? Why Not? Because Pure Bliss Is For Pure Idiots.

A Mother's Sorrow Is More True, Honorable, And Beautiful Than The Detachment Of The Sage.

Wealth And How To Achieve It: Let Us Define The Wealthy Man As He Who Has Everything He Desires. How To Reach That Happy Condition? Two Ways

Strolling On, It Seems To Me That The Strangeness And Wonder Of Existence Are Emphasized Here, In The Desert, By The Comparative Sparsity Of The Flora And Fauna: Life Not Crowded Upon Life As In Other Places But Scattered Abroad In Spareness And Simplicity, With A Generous Gift Of Space For Each Herb And Bush And Tree, Each Stem Of Grass, So That The Living Organism Stands Out Bold And Brave And Vivid Against The Lifeless Sand And Barren Rock. The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life-forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

I, Too, Believe In Fidelity. But How Can I Be True To One Woman Without Being False To All The Others?

In Order To Write A Book, It Is Necessary To Sit Down (or Stand Up) And Write. Therein Lies The Difficulty.

Indolence And Melancholy: Each Generates The Other. If One Can Speak Of Such Feeble Passions As Generating Anything.

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.

It Is Always Dishonest For A Reviewer To Review The Author Instead Of The Author's Book.

Only A Fool Would Leave The Enjoyment Of Rainbows To The Opticians. Or Give The Science Of Optics The Last Word On The Matter.

My Aunt Ida At Age Eighty-three: 'yeah,' She Said, 'i'll Be Dead Pretty Soon. And Frankly, I Don't Give A Damn.'

The Rich Can Buy Everything But Health, Virtue, Friendship, Wit, Good Looks, Love, Pride, Intelligence, Grace, And, If You Need It, Happiness.

Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

Why I Oppose The Nuclear-arms Race: I Prefer The Human Race.

I Am An Enemy Of The State. But Isn't Everyone?

In Social Affairs, I'm An Optimist. I Really Do Believe That Our Military- Industrial Civilization Will Soon Collapse.

We Are Preoccupied With Time. If We Could Learn To Love Space As Deeply As We Are Now Obsessed With Time, We Might Discover A New Meaning In The Phrase To Live Like Men.

The Night I Filled An Inside Straight: Even A Blind Hog's Gonna Root Up An Acorn Once In A While.

I Come More And More To The Conclusion That Wilderness, In America Or Anywhere Else, Is The Only Thing Left That Is Worth Saving.

May Your Trails Be Crooked, Winding, Lonesome, Dangerous, Leading To The Most Amazing View. May Your Mountains Rise Into And Above The Clouds.

If There's Anyone Still Present Whom I've Failed To Insult . . . I Apologize.

Anyone Not Paranoid In This World Must Be Crazy. . . . Speaking Of Paranoia, It's True That I Do Not Know Exactly Who My Enemies Are. But That Of Course Is Exactly Why I'm Paranoid.

Too Many American Authors Have A Servile Streak Where Their Backbone Should Be. Where's Our Latest Nobel Laureate? More Than Likely You'll Find Him In The Rose Garden Kissing The First Lady's Foot.

No Man Likes To Be Smoked Out Of His Hole In February.

Homosexuality, Like Androgyny, Might Be An Instinctive Racial Response To Overpopulation, Crowding, And Stress. Both Flourish When Empire Reaches Its Apogee.

Industrial Tourism Is A Threat To The National Parks. But The Chief Victims Of The System Are The Motorized Tourists. They Are Being Robbed And Robbing Themselves. So Long As They Are Unwilling To Crawl Out Of Their Cars They Will Not Discover The Treasures Of The National Parks And Will Never Escape The Stress And Turmoil Of The Urban-suburban Complexes Which They Had Hoped, Presumably, To Leave Behind For A While.

Be As I Am - A Reluctant Enthusiast....a Part-time Crusader, A Half-hearted Fanatic....so Get Out There And Hunt And Fish And Mess Around With Your Friends, Ramble Out Yonder And Explore The Forests, Climb The Mountains, Bag The Peaks, Run The Rivers, Breathe Deep Of That Yet Sweet And Lucid Air, Sit Quietly For A While And Contemplate The Precious Stillness, The Lovely, Mysterious, And Awesome Space.

Those Art Lovers Who Pride Themselves Mostly On *taste* Usually Possess No Other Talent.

Anywhere, Anytime, I'd Sacrifice The Finest Nuance For A Laugh, The Most Elegant Trope For A Smile.

Cold Morning On Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, Build Fire In Old Stove. Second, Start Coffee. Then, Heat Up Last Night's Pork Chops And Spinach For Breakfast. Why Not? And Why The Hell Not?

We Are Kindred All Of Us, Killer And Victim, Predator And Prey, Me And The Sly Coyote, The Soaring Buzzard, The Elegant Gopher Snake, And Trembling Cottontail, The Foul Worms That Feed On Our Entrails; All Of Them, All Of Us. Long Live Diversity, Long Live The Earth!

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit.

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

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.

May Your Rivers Flow Without End... Down Into A Desert Of Red Rock, Blue Mesas, Domes And Pinnacles And Grottos Of Endless Stone, And Down Again Into A Deep Vast Ancient Unknown Chasm Where Bars Of Sunlight Blaze On Profiled Cliffs... Where Something Strange And More Beautiful And More Full Of Wonder Than Your Deepest Dreams Waits For You-beyond That Next Turning Of The Canyon Walls.

A Man On Foot, On Horseback Or On A Bicycle Will See More, Feel More, Enjoy More In One Mile Than The Motorized Tourists Can In A Hundred Miles.

Critics Are Like Ticks On A Dog Or Tits On A Motor: Ornamental But Dysfunctional.

The Best Argument For Christianity Is The Gregorian Chant. Listening To That Music, One Can Believe Anything -- While The Music Lasts.

Power Is Always Dangerous. Power Attracts The Worst And Corrupts The Best.

What Our Economists Call A Depressed Area Almost Always Turns Out To Be A Cleaner, Freer, More Livable Place Than Most.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

Why The Critics, Like A Flock Of Ducks, Always Move In Perfect Unison: Their Authority With The Public Depends Upon An Appearance Of Unanimous Agreement. One Dissenting Voice Would Shatter The Whole Fragile Structure.

There Are Circumstances In Which Suicide Presents A Viable Option; A Workable Alternative; The Only Sensible Solution.

Football Is A Game For Trained Apes. That, In Fact, Is What Most Of The Players Are -- Retarded Gorillas Wearing Helmets And Uniforms. The Only Thing More Debased Is The Surrounding Mob Of Drunken Monkeys Howling The Gorillas On.

A Patriot Must Always Be Ready To Defend His Country Against His Government.

We Need Wilderness Because We Are Wild Animals. Everyone Needs A Place Where He Can Go To Go Crazy In Peace. For The Terror, Freedom, And Delirium. Because We Need Brutality And Raw Adventure, Because Men And Women First Learned To Love In, Under, And All Around Trees, Because We Need For Every Pair Of Feet And Legs About Ten Leagues Of Naked Nature, Crags To Leap From, Mountains To Measure By, Deserts To Finally Die In When The Heart Fails.

No Man-made Structure In All Of American History Has Been Hated So Much, By So Many, For So Long, With Such Good Reason, As That Glen Canyon Dam At Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County.

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

Lightning Streaks Like Gunfire Through The Clouds, Volleys Of Thunder Shake The Air.

The Latino Military Fare Badly When They Stumble Into War With The Gringos. But In The Torture, Murder, And Massacre Of Their Own People, They Have Always Performed With Brilliance And Elan.

Proust Again: One Can Only Wish That A Man With Such Powers Of Total Recall Had Led A Less Tedious Life, Moved Among Somewhat Livelier Circles.

How Can I Be So Evil? It Ain't Easy.

Filling Out The Form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal Anarchy. Hobbies? Survival With Honor.

It May Be True That There Are No Atheists In Foxholes. But You Don't Find Many Christians There, Either. Or, About As Many Of One As The Other.

Any Hack Can Safely Rail Away At Foreign Powers Beyond The Sea; But A Good Writer Is A Critic Of The Society He Lives In.

England Has Never Enjoyed A Genuine Social Revolution. Maybe That's What's Wrong With That Dear, Tepid, Vapid, Insipid, Stuffy, Little Country.

Every Writer Has His Favorite Coterie Of Enemies: Mine Is The East Coast Literati -- Those Prep School Playmates And Their Ivy League Colleagues.

I'm Happy To Respect Authority When It's Genuine Authority, Based On Moral Or Intellectual Or Even Technical Superiority. I'm Eager To Follow A Hero If We Can Find One. But I Tend To Resist Or Evade Any Kind Of Authority Based Merely On The Power To Coerce. Government, For Example. The Army Tried To Train Us To Salute The Uniform, Not The Man. Failed. I Will Salute The Man, Maybe, If I Think He's Worthy Of It, But I Don't Salute Uniforms Anymore.

J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- You Can Always Tell A Shithead By That Initial Initial.

Nobody Has So Many Friends That He Can Afford To Lose One.

Love Implies Anger. The Man Who Is Angered By Nothing Cares About Nothing.

A Writer Must Be Hard To Live With: When Not Working He Is Miserable, And When He Is Working He Is Obsessed.

Truth Is Always The Enemy Of Power. And Power The Enemy Of Truth.

A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

For Myself I Hold No Preferences Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous. Bricks To All Greenhouses! Black Thumb And Cutworm To The Potted Plant!

The Writer Concerned More With Technique Than Truth Becomes A Technician, Not An Artist.

Reply To Plato: I Seen Horses I Seen Cows I Haint Never Yet Seen Horsiness Nor That There Bovinity Neither.

A Good Book Is A Kind Of Paper Club, Serving To Rouse The Slumbrous And To Silence The Obtuse.

Say What You Like About My Bloody Murderous Government,' I Says, 'but Don't Insult Me Poor Bleedin' Country.

It's A Fool's Life, A Rogue's Life, And A Good Life If You Keep Laughing All The Way To The Grave.

The World Exists For Its Own Sake, Not For Ours. Swallow *that* Pill!

This World May Be Only Illusion -- But It's The Only Illusion We've Got.

If You Feel That You Must Suffer, Then Plan Your Suffering Carefully -- As You Choose Your Dreams, As You Conceive Your Ancestors.

Poetry -- Even Bad Poetry -- May Be Our Final Hope.

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

Why This Cult Of Wilderness?... Because We Like The Taste Of Freedom; Because We Like The Smell Of Danger.

I Thought Of The Wilderness We Had Left Behind Us, Open To Sea And Sky, Joyous In Its Plenitude And Simplicity, Perfect Yet Vulnerable, Unaware Of What Is Coming, Defended By Nothing, Guarded By No One.

Truth Is Merely Common Sense, Say The Naive Realist. Really? Then Where, Precisely, Is The Location Of--a Rainbow? In The Air? In The Eye? In Between? Or Somewhere Else?

Spartacus, Like Jesus, Was Also Crucified By The Romans. And For Equally Good Reasons.

Defiance Is Beautiful. The Defiance Of Power, Especially Great Or Overwhelming Power, Exalts And Glorifies The Rebel.

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?

A Journey Into The Wilderness Is The Freest, Cheapest, Most Nonprivileged Of Pleasures. Anyone With Two Legs And The Price Of A Pair Of Army Surplus Combat Boots May Enter.

Nothing Could Be Older Than The Daily News, Nothing Deader Than Yesterday's Newspaper.

I Despise My Own Nation Most. Because I Know It Best. Because I Still Love It, Suffering From Hope. For Me, That's Patrotism.

Society Is Like A Stew. If You Don't Stir It Up Every Once In A While Then A Layer Of Scum Floats To The Top.

Apuleius Married A Rich Widow, Then Wrote _the Golden Ass_.

I Suppose Each Of Us Has His Own Fantasy Of How He Wants To Die. I Would Like To Go Out In A Blaze Of Glory, Myself, Or Maybe Simply Disappear Someday, Far Out In The Heart Of The Wilderness I Love, All By Myself, Alone With The Universe And Whatever God May Happen To Be Looking On. Disappear - And Never Return. That's My Fantasy.

Longevity, Like Intelligence And Good Looks And Health And Strength Of Character, Is Largely A Matter Of Genetic Heritage. Choose Your Parents With Care.

There Is No Force More Potent In The Modern World Than Stupidity Fueled By Greed.

Might Does Not Make Right But It Sure Makes What Is.

All Dams Are Ugly, But The Glen Canyon Dam Is Sinful Ugly.

There Comes A Point, In Literary Objectivity, When The Author's Self- Effacement Is Hard To Distinguish From Moral Cowardice.

Our Contemporary Tories Prefer The Term 'ordered Liberty' To 'freedom'. The Word 'freedom' Scares Them; It Has Too Much Of A Paleolithic Ring To It.

Our “neoconservatives” Are Neither New Nor Conservative, But Old As Babylon And Evil As Hell.

The Tragedy Of Modern War Is That The Young Men Die Fighting Each Other - Instead Of Their Real Enemies Back Home In The Capitals.

We Live In A Time Of Twin Credulities: The Hunger For The Miraculous Combined With A Servile Awe Of Science. The Mating Of The Two Gives Us Superstition Plus Scientism -- A Mongoloid Metaphysic.

It Is An Author's Most Solemn Obligation To Honor Truth. If The Free And Independent Writer Does Not Speak Truth To Power, Who Will?

The Great Question Of Life Is Not The Question Of Death But The Question Of Life. Fear Of Death Shames Us All.

How Long Does It Take To Write A Good Book? All Of The Years That You've Lived.

You Cannot Reshape Human Nature Without Mutilating Human Beings.

What Ideal, Immutable Platonic Cloud Could Equal The Beauty And Perfection Of Any Ordinary Everyday Cloud Floating Over, Say, Tuba City, Arizona, On A Hot Day In June?

Men Have Never Loved One Another Much, For Reasons We Can Readily Understand: Man Is Not A Lovable Animal.

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.

Disease And Death

You Can't Study The Darkness By Flooding It With Light.

In The Afternoon I Watch The Clouds Drift Past The Bald Peak Of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (someone Has To Do It.)

I Am Happy To Be A Regional Writer. My Region Is The American West, Old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, The Human Heart, And The Male Groin.

That Which Today Calls Itself Science Gives Us More And More Information, And Indigestible Glut Of Information, And Less And Less Understanding.

Girls, Like Flowers, Bloom But Once. But Once Is Enough.

To Be Alive Is To Take Risks; To Be Always Safe And Secure Is Death.

Most New Books Drop Immediately Into The Oblivion They So Richly Deserve.

To Be Everywhere At Once Is To Be Nowhere Forever, If You Ask Me.

In A Nation Of Sheep, One Brave Man Forms A Majority.

In Social Institutions, The Whole Is Always Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts. There Will Never Be A State As Good As Its People, Or A Church Worthy Of Its Congregation, Or A University Equal To Its Faculty And Students.

The Only Thing Left Worth Saving Is Wilderness.

You Can't Belay A Man Who's Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

Climbing K2 Or Floating The Grand Canyon In An Inner Tube; There Are Some Things One Would Rather Have Done Than Do.

We Know So Very Little About This Strange Planet We Live On, This Haunted World Where All Answers Lead Only To More Mystery.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

Every Moment Is Precious. And Precarious.

From The Point Of View Of A Tapeworm, Man Was Created By God To Serve The Appetite Of The Tapeworm.

When The Situation Is Hopeless, There's Nothing To Worry About.

No Man Is Wise Enough To Be Another Man's Master. Each Man's As Good As The Next -- If Not A Damn Sight Better.

I Took The Other Road, All Right, But Only Because It Was The Easy Road For Me, The Way I Wanted To Go. If I've Encountered Some Unnecessary Resistance That's Because Most Of The Traffic Is Going The Other Way.

A Man Is Not Aware Of His Virtues (if Any). Nevertheless, One Hopes That They Exist.

Women Truly Are Better Than Men. Otherwise, They'd Be Intolerable.

In Everything But Brains And Brawn, Women Are Vastly Superior To Men. A Different Race.

Trending Author

Mary Wortley Montagu

G. I. Gurdjieff

Category