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May Your Trails Be Dim, Lonesome, Stony, Narrow, Winding And Only Slightly Uphill. May The Wind Bring Rain For The Slickrock Potholes Fourteen Miles On The Other Side Of Yonder Blue Ridge. May God's Dog Serenade Your Campfire, May The Rattlesnake And The Screech Owl Amuse Your Reverie, May The Great Sun Dazzle Your Eyes By Day And The Great Bear Watch Over You By Night.

-Edward Abbey

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May Your Trails Be

Edward Abbey

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May Your Trails Be Dim, Lonesome, Stony, Narrow, Winding And Only Slightly Uphill. May The Wind Bring Rain For The Slickrock Potholes Fourteen Miles On The Other Side Of Yonder Blue Ridge. May God's Dog Serenade Your Campfire, May The Rattlesnake And The Screech Owl Amuse Your Reverie, May The Great Sun Dazzle Your Eyes By Day And The Great Bear Watch Over You By Night.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

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

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Anarchism? You Bet Your Sweet Betsy. The Only Cure For The Ills Of Democracy Is More Democracy. Much More.

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Jesus Don't Walk On Water No More; His Feet Leak.

We Should Restore The Practice Of Dueling. It Might Improve Manners Around Here.

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

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?

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Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

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A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

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

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

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

Scientific Method

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Readers, Not Critics, Are The People Who Determine A Book's Eventual Fate.

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Freedom Begins Between The Ears.

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If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

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

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

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If You Feel That You're Not Ready To Die, Never Fear; Nature Will Give You Complete And Adequate Assistance When The Time Comes.

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

The Consolation Of Reading Biography: Most Great Men Have Led Lives Even More Miserable Than Our Own.

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.

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

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

Platitude: A Statement That Denies By Implication What It Explicitly Affirms.

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Whatever We Cannot Easily Understand We Call God; This Saves Much Wear And Tear On The Brain Tissues.

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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.

Pure Science Is A Myth: Both Mathematical Theoreticians Like Albert Einstein And Practical Crackpots Like Henry Ford Dealt With Different Aspects Of The Same World.

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.

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

A Genius Is Always On Duty; Even His Dreams Are Tax Deductible.

Good Writing Can Be Defined As Having Something To Say And Saying It Well. When One Has Nothing To Say, One Should Remain Silent. Silence Is Always Beautiful At Such Times.

Grand Opera Is A Form Of Musical Entertainment For People Who Hate Music.

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.

But It Is A Writer's Duty To Write And Speak And Record The Truth, Always The Truth, No Matter Whom May Be Offended.

Is The Archbishop's Blessing Any More Meaningful Than The Politician's Handshake? The Come, They Go, With Bigger Things Than Us On Their Minds.

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.

In History-as-politics, The 'future' Is That Vacuum In Time Waiting To Be Filled With The Antics Of Statesmen.

The Idea Of Wilderness Needs No Defense, It Only Needs Defenders.

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

The Feminist Notion That The Whole Of Human History Has Been Nothing But A Vast Intricate Conspiracy By Men To Enslave Their Wives, Mothers, Daughters, And Sisters Presents Us With An Intellectual Neurosis For Which We Do Not Yet Have A Name.

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.

Baseball Is A Slow, Sluggish Game, With Frequent And Trivial Interruptions, Offering The Spectator Many Opportunities To Reflect At Leisure Upon The Situation On The Field: This Is What A Fan Loves Most About The Game

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

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In The Soviet Union, He Was Condemned As Being Too Radical; In The West, For Being Too Conservative. He Could Please No One But The Musical Public. He Revenged Himself On Both By Writing A Short Piece Called 'march Of The Soviet Police.'

Our Culture Runs On Coffee And Gasoline, The First Often Tasting Like The Second.

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.

Reason Has Seldom Failed Us Because It Has Seldom Been Tried.

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The Only Thing Worse Than A Knee-jerk Liberal Is A Knee-pad Conservative.

Knee Jerk Reactions

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

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