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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.

-Edward Abbey

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My Loyalties Will Not

Edward Abbey

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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.

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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.

Original Sin, The True Original Sin, Is The Blind Destruction For The Sake Of Greed Of This Natural Paradise Which Lies All Around Us-if Only We Were Worthy Of It.

The Basic Science Is Not Physics Or Mathematics But Biology -- The Study Of Life. We Must Learn To Think Both Logically And Bio-logically.

Concrete Is Heavy; Iron Is Hard - But The Grass Will Prevail.

There Has Never Been A Day In My Life When I Was Not In Love.

There Are Some Places So Beautiful They Can Make A Grown Man Break Down And Weep.

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.

A Cowboy Is A Farm Boy In Leather Britches And A Comical Hat.

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.

What Is Reason? Knowledge Informed By Sympathy, Intelligence In The Arms Of Love.

Jane Austen: Getting Into Her Books Is Like Getting In Bed With A Cadaver. Something Vital Is Lacking; Namely, Life.

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

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

Balance, That's The Secret. Moderate Extremism. The Best Of Both Worlds.

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

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.

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.

Late In August The Lure Of The Mountains Becomes Irresistible. Seared By The Everlasting Sunfire, I Want To See Running Water Again, Embrace A Pine Tree, Cut My Initials In The Bark Of An Aspen, Get Bit By A Mosquito, See A Mountain Bluebird, Find A Big Blue Columbine, Get Lost In The Firs, Hike Above Timberline, Sunbathe On Snow And Eat Some Ice, Climb The Rocks And Stand In The Wind At The Top Of The World On The Peak Of Tukuhnikivats.

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

Fence Straddlers Have No Balls. In Compensation, However, They Enjoy A Comfortable Seat And Can Retreat Swiftly, When Danger Threatens, To Either Side Of The Fence. There Is Something To Be Said For Every Position.

Home Is Where, When You Have To Go There, You Probably Shouldn't.

The Love Of Wilderness Is More Than A Hunger For What Is Always Beyong Reach; It Is Also An Expression Of Loyalty To The Earth, The Earth Which Bore Us And Sustains Us, The Only Paradise We Shall Ever Know, The Only Paradise We Ever Need, If Only We Had The Eyes To See.

Jack Kerouac, Like A Sick Refrigerator, Worked Too Hard At Keeping Cool And Died On His Mama's Lap From Alcohol And Infantilism.

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

A Leader Leads From In Front, By The Power Of Example. A Ruler Pushes From Behind, By Means Of The Club, The Whip, The Power Of Fear.

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

The Rifle And Handgun Are 'equalizers' -- The Weapons Of A Democracy. Tanks And Bombers Represent Dictatorship.

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

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

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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

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

There Has Never Been An 'original' Sin: Each Is Quite Banal.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

Growth For The Sake Of Growth Is The Ideology Of The Cancer Cell.

A Pretty Girl Can Do No Wrong.

Anarchy Works. Italy Has Proved It For A Thousand Years.

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

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

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.

How To Overthrow The System: Brew Your Own Beer; Kick In Your Tee Vee; Kill Your Own Beef; Build Your Own Cabin And Piss Off The Front Porch Whenever You Bloody Well Feel Like It.

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

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

We Spend More Time Working For Our Labor-saving Machines Than They Do Working For Us.

I Have Been A Lucky Man. But Someone Has To Be.

I Find More And More, As I Grow Older, That I Prefer Women To Men, Children To Adults, Animals To Humans.... And Rocks To Living Things? No, I'm Not That Old Yet.

The Feminists Have A Legitimate Grievance. But So Does Everyone Else.

The Canyon Country Does Not Always Inspire Love. To Many It Appears Barren, Hostile, Repellent - A Fearsome Mostly Waterless Land Of Rock And Heat, Sand Dunes And Quicksand, Cactus, Thornbrush, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, And Agaraphobic Distances. To Those Who See Our Land In That Manner, The Best Reply Is, Yes, You Are Right, It Is A Dangerous And Terrible Place. Enter At Your Own Risk. Carry Water. Avoid The Noonday Sun. Try To Ignore The Vultures. Pray Frequently.

Anarchism Is Not A Romantic Fable But The Hardheaded Realization, Based On Five Thousand Years Of Experience, That We Cannot Entrust The Management Of Our Lives To Kings, Priests, Politicians, Generals, And County Commissioners.

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

In Marriage, The Occasional Catastrophic Crisis Is Easier To Manage Than The Daily Routine.

Belief In The Supernatural Reflects A Failure Of The Imagination.

Why Administrators Are Respected And Schoolteachers Are Not: An Administrator Is Paid A Lot For Doing Very Little, While A Teacher Is Paid Very Little For Doing A Lot.

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

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.

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

There's Another Disadvantage To The Use Of The Flashlight: Like Many Other Mechanical Gadgets It Tends To Separate A Man From The World Around Him. If I Switch It On My Eyes Adapt To It And I Can See Only The Small Pool Of Light It Makes In Front Of Me; I Am Isolated. Leaving The Flashlight In My Pocket Where It Belongs, I Remain A Part Of The Environment I Walk Through And My Vision Though Limited Has No Sharp Or Definite Boundary.

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.

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.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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

I Must Confess That I Know Nothing Whatsoever About True Underlying Reality, Never Having Met Any.

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

All Governments Require Enemy Governments.

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

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.

I’m Tired Of Doing What I Don’t Want To Do To Live The Way I Don’t Want To Live.

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

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

Government: If You Refuse To Pay Unjust Taxes, Your Property Will Be Confiscated. If You Attempt To Defend Your Property, You Will Be Arrested. If You Resist Arrest, You Will Be Clubbed. If You Defend Yourself Against Clubbing, You Will Be Shot Dead. These Procedures Are Known As The Rule Of Law.

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

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

The Ever-rising Cost Of Living: Someday Soon, The Corporate Technicians Will Be Locking Meters On Our Noses And Charging Us A Royalty On The Air We Breathe.

By The Age Of Forty, A Man Is Responsible For His Face. And His Fate.

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.

Most Of Us Lead Lives Of Chaotic Improvisation From Day To Day, Bawling For Peace While Plunging Grimly Into Fresh Disorders.

Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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

For This World That Men Have Made, None Of Us Is Bad Enough. For The World That Made Us, None Is Good Enough.

James Joyce Buried Himself In His Great Work. _finnegan's Wake_ Is His Monument And His Tombstone. A Dead End.

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

Ah Yes, The Head Is Full Of Books. The Hard Part Is To Force Them Down Through The Bloodstream And Out Through The Fingers.

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

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

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.

Among Politicians And Businessmen, *pragmatism* Is The Current Term For 'to Hell With Our Children.'

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With The Turn Of An Ignition Key. That’s The Best Thing About Walking, The Journey Itself. It Doesn’t Much Matter Whether You Get Where You’re Going Or Not. You’ll Get There Anyway. Every Good Hike Brings You Eventually Back Home. Right Where You Started.

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.

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.

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.

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

Opera: I Like It, Except For All Those Howling Sopranos And Caterwauling Tenors. (why Can't Tenors Sing Like Men?)

What Did Jesus Say To The Headwaiter At The Last Supper? 'separate Checks, Please.'

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.

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

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.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue. One Kid On A Riverbank Working Out A Stephen Foster Tune On His New Harmonica Heard From The Correct Esthetic Distance Projects More Magic And Power Than The Entire Vienna Philharmonic And Chorus Laboring (once Again) Through The Mozart Requiem Or Bach's B Minor Mass.

Yes, There Are Plenty Of Heroes And Heroines Everywhere You Look. They Are Not Famous People. They Are Generally Obscure And Modest People Doing Useful Work, Keeping Their Families Together And Taking An Active Part In The Health Of Their Communities, Opposing What Is Evil (in One Way Or Another) And Defending What Is Good. Heroes Do Not Want Power Over Others.

Everyone Should Learn A Manual Trade: It's Never Too Late To Become An Honest Person.

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

Wilderness And Motors Are Incompatible And The Former Can Best Be Experienced, Understood And Enjoyed When The Machines Are Left Behind Where They Belong -- On The Superhighways And In The Parking Lots, On The Reservoirs And In The Marinas.

It's All Still There In Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days And Years To Come.

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

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

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 Have Written Much About Many Good Places. But The Best Places Of All, I Have Never Mentioned.

Every Moment Is Precious. And Precarious.

If There's Anything I Hate, It's The Vibraphone. And The Cha-cha-cha. And Latin Rhythms Generally.

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

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

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?

Married Couples Who Quarrel Bitterly Every Day May Really Need Each Other As Deeply As Those Who Appear To Be Desperately In Love.

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

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

I Was Once Invited To Take Part In A Heroic, Possibly Fatal Enterprise, But I Declined, Mainly On Account Of Sloth.

John Updike: Our Greatest Suburban Chic-boutique Man Of Letters. A Smug And Fatal Complacency Has Stunted His Growth Beyond Hope Of Surgical Repair. Not Enough Passion In His Collected Works To Generate Steam In A Beer Can. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By Some Critics To Be America's Finest *living* Author: Hold A Chilled Mirror To His Lips And You Will See, Presently, A Fine And Dewy Moisture Condensing -- Like A Faery Breath! -- Upon The Glass.

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

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

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

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

The Function Of Football, Soccer, Basketball And Other Passion-sports In Modern Industrial Society Is The Transference Of Boredom, Frustration, Anger And Rage Into Socially Acceptable Forms Of Combat. A Temporary Substitute For War; For Nationalism; Identification With Something Bigger Than The Self.

Life Is Cruel? Compared To What?

If People Persist In Trespassing Upon The Grizzlies' Territory, We Must Accept The Fact That The Grizzlies, From Time To Time, Will Harvest A Few Trespassers.

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.

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

God Bless America. Let's Try To Save Some Of It.

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

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.

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

Be Loyal To What You Love, Be True To The Earth, Fight Your Enemies With Passion And Laughter.

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?

Where All Pretend To Be Thinking Alike, It's Likely That No One Is Thinking At All.

Recorded History Is Largely An Account Of The Crimes And Disasters Committed By Banal Little Men At The Levers Of Imperial Machines.

Men Love Their Ideas More Than Their Lives. And The More Preposterous The Idea, The More Eager They Are To Die For It. And To Kill For It.

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

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

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

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

Scientific Method

Great Art Is Never Perfect; Perfect Art Is Never Great.

I'm A Humanist; I'd Rather Kill A Man Than A Snake.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

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.

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

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

If It's Knowledge And Wisdom You Want, Then Seek Out The Company Of Those Who Do Real Work For An Honest Purpose.

Henry James Was Our Master Of Periphrasis -- The Fine Art Of Saying As Little As Possible In The Greatest Number Of Words.

The Most Striking Thing About The Rich Is The Gracious Democracy Of Their Manners -- And The Crude Vulgarity Of Their Way Of Life.

We Are Slaves In The Sense That We Depend For Our Daily Survival Upon An Expand-or-expire Agro-industrial Empire—a Crackpot Machine—that The Specialists Cannot Comprehend And The Managers Cannot Manage. Which Is, Furthermore, Devouring World Resources At An Exponential Rate. We Are, Most Of Us, Dependent Employees. …edward Abbey (1927-1989)

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.

The World Is What It Is, No Less And No More, And Therein Lies Its Entire And Sufficient Meaning.

Mayonnaise, Like Hollandaise, Was Invented By The French To Cover Up The Flavor Of Spoiled Flesh, Stale Vegetables, Rotten Fish. Beware The Sauce! Where Food Comes Beslobbered With An Elegant Slime You May Well Suspect The Integrity Of The Basic Ingredients.

I Love America Because It Is A Confused, Chaotic Mess - And I Hope We Can Keep It This Way For At Least Another Thousand Years. The Permissive Society Is The Free Society.

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.

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

A Shelf Of Classics For Our Young Adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, And _the Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

Within Minutes My 115-mile Walk Through The Desert Hills Becomes A Thing Apart, A Disjunct Reality On The Far Side Of A Bottomless Abyss, Immediately Beyond Physical Recollection.but It's All Still There In My Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days To Come, Like A Treasure Found And Then, Voluntarily, Surrendered. Returned To The Mountains With My Blessing. It Leaves A Golden Glowing On The Mind.

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.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

How Strange And Wonderful Is Our Home, Our Earth, With Its Swirling Vaporous Atmosphere, Its Flowing And Frozen Liquids, Its Trembling Plants, Its Creeping, Crawling, Climbing Creatures, The Croaking Things With Wings That Hang On Rocks And Soar Through The Fog, The Furry Grass, The Scaly Seas.

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

Music Begins Where Words Leave Off. Music Expresses The Inexpressible. If There Is A Kingdom Of Heaven, It Lies In Music.

In Art As In Life, Form And Subject, Body And Soul, Are One.

Women Who Love Only Women May Have A Good Point.

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

Night And Day The River Flows. If Time Is The Mind Of Space, The River Is The Soul Of The Desert. Brave Boatmen Come, They Go, They Die, The Voyage Flows On Forever. We Are All Canyoneers. We Are All Passengers On This Little Mossy Ship, This Delicate Dory Sailing Round The Sun That Humans Call The Earth. Joy, Shipmates, Joy.

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

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

The Desert Wears... A Veil Of Mystery. Motionless And Silent It Evokes In Us An Elusive Hint Of Something Unknown, Unknowable, About To Be Revealed. Since The Desert Does Not Act It Seems To Be Waiting -- But Waiting For What?

The Result Of This Bestial Lust Is An Indiscriminate And Promiscuous Splaying Of All Of My Energies- Wanting All, I Accomplish Nothing; Desiring Everything, I Satisfy Nothing And Am Satisfied By Nothing.

Accomplish Nothing

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

A Man Without Passion Would Be Like A Body Without A Soul. Or Even More Grotesque, Like A Soul Without A Body.

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

‎"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

It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It.

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.

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

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.

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.

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

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

Walking Takes Longer... 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.

Native American

We're All Undesirable Elements From Somebody's Point Of View.

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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.

The Ideal Society Can Be Described, Quite Simply, As That In Which No Man Has The Power Of Means To Coerce Others.

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 Would Like To Evoke The Sense Of Wonder And Magic In The Reader But Without Invoking The Mystical, The Supernatural Or The Transcendent.

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.

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