Background Image

...

I Have Found Through Trial And Error That I Work Best Under Duress. In Fact I Work Only Under Duress.

-Edward Abbey

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Have Found Through

Edward Abbey

...

I Have Found Through Trial And Error That I Work Best Under Duress. In Fact I Work Only Under Duress.

Views: 40794

Topic

Trial And Error

More From Edward Abbey

What's The Difference Between The Lone Ranger And God? There Really Is A Lone Ranger.

Desire, Said The Buddha, Is The Cause Of Suffering. But Without Desire, What Delight?

I Don't See How Poetry Can Ever Be Easy... Real Poetry, The Thick, Dense, Intense, Complicated Stuff That Lives And Endures, Requires Blood Sweat; Blood And Sweat Are Essential Elements In Poetry As Well As Behind It.

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.

Democracy -- Rule By The People -- Sounds Like A Fine Thing; We Should Try It Sometime In America.

I Am Delighted, One More Time, By The Daring Of My Species And The Audacity Of Our Flying Machines. There Is Poetry And Music In Our Technology, A Beauty As Touching As That Of Eagle, Moss Campion, Raven Or Yonder Limestone Boulder Shining Under The Arctic Sun.

It's True: Every Time You Kill An Elk, You're Saving Some Cow's Life.

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

And If The Computer Gives You Any Back Talk, Pour Some Well-sugared Office Coffee Into Its Evil Little Silicon Brain.

War: First Day In The U.s. Army, The Government Placed A Bible In My Left Hand, A Bayonet In The Other.

Salome Had But Seven Veils; The Artist Has A Thousand.

A True Conservative Must Necessarily Be A Conservationist.

In The Land Of Bleating Sheep And Braying Jackasses, One Brave And Honest Man Is Bound To Create A Scandal.

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.

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

Counterpart To The Knee-jerk Liberal Is The New Knee-pad Conservative, Always Groveling Before The Rich And The Powerful.

The Tank, The B-52, The Fighter-bomber, The State-controlled Police And Military Are The Weapons Of Dictatorship. The Rifle Is The Weapon Of Democracy. Not For Nothing Was The Revolver Called An "equalizer."

In Metaphysics, The Notion That Earth And All That's On It Is A Mental Construct Is The Product Of People Who Spend Their Lives Inside Rooms. It Is An Indoor Philosophy.

Let The People Walk. Or Ride Horses, Bicycles, Mules, Wild Pigs-anything-but Keep The Automobiles And The Motorcycles And All Their Motorized Relatives Out. We Have Agreed Not To Drive Our Automobiles Into Cathedrals, Concert Halls, Art Museums, Legislative Assemblies, Private Bedrooms And Other Sanctums Of Our Culture; We Should Treat Our National Parks With The Same Deference, For They, Too, Are Holy Places.

Do I Believe In Ghosts? I Believe In The Ghosts That Haunt The Human Mind.

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

War? The One War I'd Be Happy To Join Is The War Against Officers.

The Artist's Job? To Be A Miracle Worker: Make The Blind See, The Dull Feel, The Dead To Live.

If, As Some Say, Evil Lies In The Hearts And Not The Institutions Of Men, Then There's Hardly A Distinction Worth Making Between, Say, Hitler's Germany And Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

My Loyalties Will Not Be Bound By National Borders, Or Confined In Time By One Nation's History, Or Limited In The Spiritual Dimension By One Language And Culture. I Pledge My Allegiance To The Damned Human Race, And My Everlasting Love To The Green Hills Of Earth, And My Intimations Of Glory To The Singing Stars, To The Very End Of Space And Time.

‎"if My Decomposing Carcass Helps Nourish The Roots Of A Juniper Tree Or The Wings Of A Vulture--that Is Immortality Enough For Me. And As Much As Anyone Deserves." E.abbey

The Critics Say That Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony Has No Form. They Are Wrong; It Has The Form Of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

A Cowboy Is A Hired Hand On The Middle Of A Horse Contemplating The Hind End Of A Cow.

A Critic Is To An Author As A Fungus To An Oak.

The One Great Gift To Humankind From Our Nuclear Physicists Has Been The Nuclear Bomb. How Can We Ever Thank Them?

An Economic System Which Can Only Expand Or Expire Must Be False To All That Is Human.

We Need Wilderness Whether Or Not We Ever Set Foot In It. We Need A Refuge Even Though We May Never Need To Go There. We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope.

What Good Is A Bill Of Rights That Does Not Include The Right To Play, To Wander, To Explore, The Right To Stillness And Solitude, To Discovery And Physical Freedom?

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

I Have Been Called A Curmudgeon, Which My Obsolescent Dictionary Defines As A "surly, Illmannered, Badtempered Fellow." ... Nowadays, Curmudgeon Is Likely To Refer To Anyone Who Hates Hypocrisy, Cant, Sham, Dogmatic Ideologies, The Pretenses And Evasions Of Euphemism, And Has The Nerve To Point Out Unpleasant Facts And Takes The Trouble To Impale These Sins On The Skewer Of Humor And Roast Them Over The Fires Of Empiric Fact, Common Sense, And Native Intelligence. In This Nation Of Bleating Sheep And Braying Jackasses, It Then Becomes An Honor To Be Labeled Curmudgeon.

All Serious Writers Want The Obvious Rewards: Fame, Money, Women, Love -- And Most Of All, An Audience!

Men Come And Go, Cities Rise And Fall, Whole Civilizations Appear And Disappear-the Earth Remains, Slightly Modified. The Earth Remains, And The Heartbreaking Beauty Where There Are No Hearts To Break....i Sometimes Choose To Think, No Doubt Perversely, That Man Is A Dream, Thought An Illusion, And Only Rock Is Real. Rock And Sun.

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

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

It Is Not The Writer's Task To Answer Questions But To Question Answers. To Be Impertinent, Insolent, And, If Necessary, Subversive.

We Are Befouling And Destroying Our Own Home, We Are Committing A Slow But Accelerating Race Suicide And Life Murder - Planetary Biocide. Now There Is A Mighty Theme For A Mighty Book But A Challenge To Which No Modern Novelist Or Poet Has Yet Responded. Where Is Our Melville, Our Milton, Our Thomas Mann When We Need Him Most?

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

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

There Is Science, Logic, Reason; There Is Thought Verified By Experience. And Then There Is California.

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

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

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

God Is A Sound People Make When They're Too Tired To Think Anymore.

The Majority Of American Writers Today Have Chosen Passive Non-resistance To Things As They Are, Producing Sloughs Of Poetry About Their Personal Angst And Anomie, Cascades Of Short Stories And Rivers Of Novels Obsessed With The Nuances Of Domestic Relationships - Suburban Hanky-panky - Chic Boutique Shopping Mall Literary Soap Opera. When They Do Speak Out On Matters Of Controversy They Attack Not The Evils Of Our Time But Fellow Writers Who May Insist On Complaining.

The World Of Employer And Employee, Like That Of Master And Slave, Debases Both.

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

When A Man Must Be Afraid To Drink Freely From His Country's River And Streams That Country Is No Longer Fit To Live In.

Each Thing In Its Way, When True To Its Own Character, Is Equally Beautiful. (p 41)

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

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.

Nobody Seems More Obsessed By Diet Than Our Antimaterialist, Otherworldly, New Age, Spiritual Types. But If The Material World Is Merely Illusion, An Honest Guru Should As Content With Budweiser And Bratwurst As With Raw Carrot Juice, Tofu, And Seaweed Slime.

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

There Never Was A Good War Or A Bad Revolution.

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

Style: There Is Something In Too Much Verbal Felicity (as In Joyce Or Nabokov Or Borges) That Can Betray The Writer Into Technique For The Sake Of Technique.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

Alaska Is Our Biggest, Buggiest, Boggiest State. Texas Remains Our Largest Unfrozen State. But Mountainous Utah, If Ironed Out Flat, Would Take Up More Space On A Map Than Either.

I Want My Body To Help Fertilize The Growth Of A Cactus Or Cliff Rose Or Sagebrush Or Tree.

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.

In Writing, Fidelity To Fact Leads Eventually To The Poetry Of Truth.

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

All Revolutions Have Failed? Perhaps. But Rebellion For Good Cause Is Self- Justifying -- A Good In Itself. Rebellion Transforms Slaves Into Human Beings, If Only For An Hour.

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

Girls: I Never Wanted Them All. Just All The Ones I Wanted.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

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

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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

Nothing Can Excel A Few Days In Jail For Giving A Young Man Or Woman A Quick Education In The Basis Of Industrial Society.

The Sexual Revolution Transformed The American West: Now Even Cowboys Can Get Laid.

Liberty Cannot Be Guaranteed By Law. Nor By Any Thing Else Except The Resolution Of Free Citizens To Defend Their Liberties.

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

A Good Writer Must Have More Than Vin Rosé In His Veins, Use More Than Chablis For Ink.

Not All Questions Can Be Answered.

Vaughan Telecom Installers And Contractors Ensure The Highest Quality Service For Data And Network Cabling In Toronto And Gta Area.

Let Us Hope Our Weapons Are Never Needed - But Do Not Forget What The Common People Of This Nation Knew When They Demanded The Bill Of Rights: An Armed Citizenry Is The First Defense, The Best Defense, And The Final Defense Against Tyranny.

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.

Saving The World Was Merely A Hobby. My *vocation* Has Been That Of Inspector Of Desert Water Holes.

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

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chain Saws.

The Purpose And Function Of Government Is Not To Preside Over Change But To Prevent Change. By Political Methods When Unavoidable, By Violence When Convenient.

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

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

We Judge Individual Man And Women As We Do Nations And Races -- By The Character Of Their Achievement And By Their Achievement Of Character.

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

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

I've Never Yet Read A Review Of One Of My Own Books That I Couldn't Have Written Much Better Myself.

Beware The Writer Who Always Encloses The Word *reality* In Quotation Marks: He's Trying To Slip Something Over On You. Or Into You.

Quotation Marks

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

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.

Quantum Mechanics Provides Us With An Approximate, Plausible, Conjectural Explanation Of What Actually Is, Or Was, Or May Be Taking Place Inside A Cyclotron During A Dark Night In February.

Proverbs Save Us The Trouble Of Thinking. What We Call Folk Wisdom Is Often No More Than A Kind Of Expedient Stupidity.

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

The "terror" Of The French Revolution Lasted For Ten Years. The Terror That Preceded And Led To It Lasted For A Thousand Years.

Simply Because Humankind Have The Power Now To Meddle Or 'manage' Or 'exercise Stewardship' In Every Nook And Cranny Of The World Does Not Mean That We Have A Right To Do So. Even Less, The Obligation.

I'd Sooner Exchange Ideas With The Birds On Earth Than Learn To Carry On Intergalactic Communications With Some Obscure Race Of Humanoids On A Satellite Planet From The World Of Betelgeuse.

Three Words Remain That Can Yet Stir The Blood Of Man: The Word 'rebellion'; The Word 'revolt'; The Word 'revolution'.

Rocks, Like Louseworts And Snail Darters And Pupfish And 3rdworld Black, Lesbian, Feminist, Militant Poets, Have Rights, Too. Especially The Right To Exist.

If The World Is Irrational, We Can Never Know It -- Either It Or Its Irrationality.

Most Academic Economists Know Nothing Of Economy. In Fact, They Know Little Of Anything.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

If Industrial Man Continues To Multiply His Numbers And Expand His Operations He Will Succeed In His Apparent Intention, To Seal Himself Off From The Natural And Isolate Himself Within A Synthetic Prison Of His Own Making.

It Is The Difference Between Men And Women, Not The Sameness, That Creates The Tension And The Delight.

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.

There Is A Fine Art To Making Enemies And It Requires Diligent Cultivation. It's Not As Easy As It Looks.

The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

I Would Give Ten Years Off The Beginning Of My Life To See, Only Once, Tyrannosaurus Rex Come Rearing Up From The Elms Of Central Park, A Morgan Police Horse Screaming In Its Jaws. We Can Never Have Enough Of Nature.

Narrow-minded Provincialism: Sad To Say But True - I Am More Interested In The Mountain Lions Of Utah, The Wild Pigs Of Arizona, Than I Am In The Fate Of All The Arabs Of Araby, All The Wogs Of Hindustan, All The Ethiopes Of Abyssinia.

I'm In Favor Of Animal Liberation. Why? Because I'm An Animal.

Life Is Too Short For Grief. Or Regret. Or Bullshit.

As War And Government Prove, Insanity Is The Most Contagious Of Diseases.

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

Why Is It That The Destruction Of Something Created By Humans Is Called Vandalism, Yet The Destruction Of Something Created By God Is Called Development?

We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope.

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

A Crowded Society Is A Restrictive Society; An Overcrowded Society Becomes An Authoritarian, Repressive And Murderous Society.

Why Can't We Simply Borrow What Is Useful To Us From Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Especially Zen, As We Borrow From Christianity, Science, American Indian Traditions And World Literature In General, Including Philosophy, And Let The Rest Go Hang? Borrow What We Need But Rely Principally Upon Our Own Senses, Common Sense And Daily Living Experience.

Though Men Now Possess The Power To Dominate And Exploit Every Corner Of The Natural World, Nothing In That Fact Implies That They Have The Right Or The Need To Do So.

It Is Not Death Or Dying That Is Tragic, But Rather To Have Existed Without Fully Participating In Life- That Is The Deepest Personal Tragedy.

In The Modern World, All Literary Art Is Necessarily Political -- Especially That Which Pretends Not To Be.

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

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.

Women: We Cannot Love Them All. But We Must Try.

Those Who Fear Death Most Are Those Who Enjoy Life Least.

Scientific Method: There's A Madness In The Method.

Scientific Method

The Moral Duty Of The Free Writer Is To Begin His Work At Home: To Be A Critic Of His Own Community, His Own Country, His Own Government, His Own Culture. The More Freedom The Writer Possesses, The Greater The Moral Obligation To Play The Role Of Critic.

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

Be A Half-assed Crusader, A Part-time Fanatic. Don't Worry To Much About The Fate Of The World. Saving The World Is Only A Hobby. Get Out There And Enjoy The World, Your Girlfriend, Your Boyfriend, Husbands Wives; Climb Mountains, Run Rivers, Get Drunk, Do Whatever You Want To Do While You Can, Before It's Too Late.

No Tyranny Is So Irksome As Petty Tyranny: The Officious Demands Of Policemen, Government Clerks, And Electromechanical Gadgets.

If We Had The Power Of Ten Shakespeares Or A Dozen Mozarts, We Could Not Produce Anything Half So Marvelous As One Ordinary Human Child.

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.

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

In The End, For All Our Differences And Conflicts, Most Women And Men Share The Same Food, Work, Shelter, Bed, Life, Joy, Anguish, And Fate. We Need Each Other.

Preacher To Me: 'a Dollar For The Lord, Brother?' Me To Preacher: 'that's All Right, I'm Headed His Way. I'll Give It To Him When I See Him.'

There Has Never Yet Been A Human Society Worthy Of The Name Of Civilization. Civilization Remains A Remote Ideal.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

Capitalism Sounds Good In Theory But It Just Doesn't Work.

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

Desert Springtime, With Flowers Popping Up All Over The Place, Trees Leafing Out, Streams Gushing Down From The Mountains. Great Time Of Year For Hiking, Camping, Exploring, Sleeping Under The New Moon And The Old Stars. At Dawn And At Evening We Hear The Coyotes Howling With Excitement—mating Season.

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

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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.

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.

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

I Choose To Listen To The River For A While, Thinking River Thoughts, Before Joining The Night And The Stars.

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

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.

America My Country: Last Nation On Earth To Abolish Human Slavery; First Of All Nations To Drop The Nuclear Bomb On Our Fellow Human Beings.

My Own Best Books Have Not Been Published. In Fact, They've Not Even Been Written Yet.

Money Confers The Power To Command The Labor Of Others. Love Of Money Is Love Of Power. And Love Of Power Is The Root Of Evil.

The Proustian Aquarium: Grotesque And Gorgeous Fish Drifting With Languid Fins Through A Subaqueous Medium Of Pale Violet Polluted Ink.

Places: A Cold, Bleak, Lonely Day On The Rim At Muley Point, Utah. And The Heart-cracking Loveliness Of The Blood-smeared, Bitter, Incomprehensible Slaughterhouse Of A World.

The Developers And Entrepreneurs Must Somehow Be Taught A New Vocabulary Of Values.

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.

I Understand And Sympathize With The Reasonable Needs Of A Reasonable Number Of People On A Finite Continent. All Life Depends Upon Other Life. But What Is Happening Today, In North America, Is Not Rational Use But Irrational Massacre. Man The Pest, Multiplied To The Swarming Stage, Is Attacking The Remaining Forests Like A Plague Of Locusts On A Field Of Grain.

In This Glare Of Brilliant Emptiness, In This Arid Intensity Of Pure Heat, In The Heart Of A Weird Solitude, Great Silence And Grand Desolution, All Things Recede To Distrances Out Of Reach, Relecting Light But Impossible To Touch, Annihilating All Thought And All That Men Have Made To A Spasm Of Whirling Dust Far Out On The Golden Desert.

Women Who Love Only Women May Have A Good Point.

The Best People, Like The Best Wines, Come From The Hills.

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.

Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

Passion, Sexual Passion, May Lead To Marriage, But Cannot Sustain Marriage. The Purpose Of Marriage Is The Raising Of Children, For Which Patience, Not Passion, Is The Necessary Foundation.

There Are Two Kinds Of People I Cannot Abide: Bigots And Any Well-organized Ethnic Group.

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

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.

Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

How Did Haydn And Mozart Produce Such Vast Quantities Of Formally Perfect Art? They Worked From A Perfect Formula. In Music, Beethoven Was The Great Emancipator.

A Crude Meal, No Doubt, But The Best Of All Sauces Is Hunger.

If The End Does Not Justify The Means - What Can?

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.

Once Upon A Time

In The World Of Words, One Of My Best-loved Tribes Is The Diatribe.

Civilization, Like An Airplane In Flight, Survives Only As It Keeps Going Forward.

The National Parks Belong To Everyone. To The People. To All Of Us. The Government Keeps Saying So And Maybe, In This One Case At Least, The Government Is Telling The Truth. Hard To Believe, But Possible.

One Day In Dipstick, Nebraska, Or Landfill, Oklahoma, Is Worth More To Me Than An Eternity In Dante's Plastic Paradiso, Or Yeats's Gold-plated Byzantium.

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

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

The Purpose Of Love, Sex, And Marriage Is The Production And Raising Of Children. But Look About You: Most People Have No Business Having Children. They Are Unqualified, Either Genetically Or Culturally Or Both, To Reproduce Such Sorry Specimens As Themselves. Of All Our Privileges, The License To Breed Is The One Most Grossly Abused.

I Believe That There Is A Kind Of Poetry, Even A Kind Of Truth, In Simple Fact.

Of Course I Litter The Public Highway. Every Chance I Get. After All, It's Not The Beer Cans That Are Ugly; It's The Highway That Is Ugly.

I Am My Brother's Keeper, Says The Chickenshit Liberal. Perhaps He Does Not Realize That He Now Has More Than 2 1/2 Billion Brothers.

Are People More Important Than The Grizzly Bear? Only From The Point Of View Of Some People.

There Is A Wine Called Easy Days And Mellow Nights, Well-known On The Outskirts Of The Navajo Reservation. It Is An Economical Wine, Fortified With The Best Of Intentions, And I Recommend It To Every Serious Wino.

When The Writer Has Done His Best, He Then Should Proceed To Do His Second Best.

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.

What Is The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree? The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree Is To Provide Shade For The Tiny Titmouse.

Science Transcends Mere Politics. As Recent History Demonstrates, Scientists Are As Willing To Work For A Tojo, A Hitler, Or A Stalin As For The Free Nations Of The West.

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

Falling In Love

To Die Alone, On Rock Under Sun At The Brink Of The Unknown, Like A Wolf, Like A Great Bird, Seems To Me Very Good Fortune Indeed.

It Seems Clear At Last That Our Love For The Natural World-nature-is The Only Means By Which We Can Requite God's Obvious Love For It.

Trending Author

Elizabeth Gaskell

Category