Background Image

...

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.

-Edward Abbey

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Strolling On, It Seems

Edward Abbey

...

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.

Views: 44925

Topic

More From Edward Abbey

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

I Once Sat On The Rim Of A Mesa Above The Rio Grande For Three Days And Nights, Trying To Have A Vision. I Got Hungry And Saw God In The Form Of A Beef Pie.

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

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

Abolition Of A Woman's Right To Abortion, When And If She Wants It, Amounts To Compulsory Maternity: A Form Of Rape By The State.

Edmund Wilson Was Our Greatest American Literary Critic Because He Was More Than A Literary Critic: He Was A Fearless, Even Radical Judge Of The Society He Lived In. (see, For Example, _a Piece Of My Mind_; _the Cold War And The Income Tax_; The Introduction To _patriotic Gore_.) Our Conventional Critics Cannot Forgive Him For Those Scandalous Lapses In Good Taste.

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

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

The Earth, Like The Sun, Like The Air, Belongs To Everyone - And To No One.

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

The Distrust Of Wit Is The Beginning Of Tyranny.

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

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

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

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.

By The Age Of Eighteen, A Human Has Acquired Enough Joy And Heartache To Provide The Food Of Reflection For A Century.

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

I Intend To Be Good For The Rest Of My Natural Life -- If I Live That Long.

Orthodoxy Is A Relaxation Of The Mind Accompanied By A Stiffening Of The Heart.

Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

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.

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

The Axiom Of Conditioned Repetition, Like The Binomial Theorem, Is Nothing But A Piece Of Insolence.

We Live In A Society In Which It Is Normal To Be Sick; And Sick To Be Abnormal.

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.

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

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

In America, As Elsewhere, The General Irritability Level Keeps Rising.

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?

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

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chainsaws. It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

Most Of What We Call The Classics Of World Literature Suggest Artifacts In A Wax Museum. We Have To Hire And Pay Professors To Get Them Read And Talked About.

World Literature

A True Conservative Must Necessarily Be A Conservationist.

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

It May Be True That My Desk Here Is Really 'nothing But' A Transient Eddy Of Electrons In The Flux Of Universal Process. Nevertheless, I Find That It Continues To Support My Feet, My Revolver, And My Cigars All Day Long. What Happens When My Back Is Turned I Don't Know. Or Much Care. That's No Concern Of Mine.

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.

A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

Nature Is Indifferent To Our Love, But Never Unfaithful.

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

We Live In The Kind Of World Where Courage Is The Most Essential Of Virtues; Without Courage, The Other Virtues Are Useless.

Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

Flora And Fauna

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

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

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

Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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

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.

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.'

I've Wrecked And Ravaged Half My Life In The Pursuit Of Women, And I Suffer The Pangs Of About Seventeen Regrets -- The Seventeen Who Got Away.

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.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep; Ugliness Goes All The Way Through.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

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.

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

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

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

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

A True Libertarian Supports Free Enterprise, Opposes Big Business; Supports Local Self-government, Opposes The Nation-state; Supports The National Rifle Association, Opposes The Pentagon.

To Meet God Or Medusa Face To Face, Even If It Means Risking Everything Human In Myself. I Dream Of A Hard And Brutal Mysticism In Which The Naked Self Merges With The Nonhuman World And Yet Somehow Survives Still Intact Individual, Separate. Paradox And Bedrock.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Our Modern Industrial Economy Takes A Mountain Covered With Trees, Lakes, Running Streams And Transforms It Into A Mountain Of Junk, Garbage, Slime Pits, And Debris.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

You Long For Success? Start At The Bottom; Dig Down.

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.

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

What We Need Now Are Heroes And Heroines, About A Million Of Them, One Brave Deed Is Worth A Thousand Books. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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

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

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

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

Knee Jerk Reactions

One Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures. If It's The Right Word.

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

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.

Running The Big Rapids Is Like Sex: Half The Fun Lies In The Anticipation. Two Thirds Of The Thrill With The Approach. The Remainder Is Only Ecstasy-or Darkness.

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

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

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?

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

Falling In Love

To The Technocrats: Have Mercy On Us. Relax A Bit, Take Time Out For Simple Pleasures. For Example, The Luxuries Of Electricity, Indoor Plumbing, Central Heating, Instant Electronic Communication And Such, Have Taught Me To Relearn And Enjoy The Basic Human Satisfactions Of Dipping Water From A Cold Clear Mountain Stream; Of Building A Wood Fire In A Cast-iron Stove; Of Using Long Winter Nights For Making Music, Making Things, Making Love; Of Writing Long Letters, In Longhand With A Fountain Pen, To The Few People On This Earth I Truly Care About.

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

Scientific Method

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.

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Hold No Preference Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous.

Mexico: Where Life Is Cheap, Death Is Rich, And The Buzzards Are Never Unhappy.

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

Government Should Be Weak, Amateurish And Ridiculous. At Present, It Fulfills Only A Third Of The Role.

Through Logic And Inference We Can Prove Anything. Therefore, Logic And Inference, In Contrast To Ordinary Daily Living Experience, Are Secondary Instruments Of Knowledge. Probably Tertiary.

Industrialism, Whether Of The Capitalist Or Socialist Coloration, Is The Basic Tyrant Of The Modern Age.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

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

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

When The Situation Is Desperate, It Is Too Late To Be Serious. Be Playful.

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

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

When The Philosopher's Argument Becomes Tedious, Complicated, And Opaque, It Is Usually A Sign That He Is Attempting To Prove As True To The Intellect What Is Plainly False To Common Sense.

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.

If You're Never Ridden A Fast Horse At A Dead Run Across A Desert Valley At Dawn, Be Of Good Cheer: You've Only Missed Out On One Half Of Life.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

It Will Be Objected That A Constantly Increasing Population Makes Resistance And Conservation A Hopeless Battle. This Is True. Unless A Way Is Found To Stabilize The Nation's Population, The Parks Can Not Be Saved. Or Anything Else Worth A Damn. Wilderness Preservation, Like A Hundred Other Good Causes, Will Be Forgotten Under The Overwhelming Pressure Of A Struggle For Mere Survival And Sanity In A Completely Urbanized, Completely Industrialized, Ever More Crowded Environment. For My Own Part I Would Rather Take My Chances In A Thermonuclear War Than Live In Such A World.

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?

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

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

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

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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

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

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

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

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

The Missionaries Go Forth To Christianize The Savages - As If The Savages Weren't Dangerous Enough Already.

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.

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

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

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

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

My Sole Literary Ambition Is To Write One Good Novel, Then Retire To My Hut In The Desert, Assume The Lotus Position, Compose My Mind And Senses, And Sink Into Meditation, Contemplating My Novel.

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

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.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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

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

A Giant Thirst Is A Great Joy When Quenched In Time.

In All Of Nature, There Is No Sound More Pleasing Than That Of A Hungry Animal At Its Feed. Unless You Are The Food.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

In The Soviet Union, Government Controls Industry. In The United States, Industry Controls Government. That Is The Principal Structural Difference Between The Two Great Oligarchies Of Our Time.

At Some Point We Must Draw A Line Across The Ground Of Our Home And Our Being, Drive A Spear Into The Land And Say To The Bulldozers, Earthmovers, Government And Corporations, "thus Far And No Further." If We Do Not, We Shall Later Feel, Instead Of Pride, The Regret Of Thoreau, That Good But Overly-bookish Man, Who Wrote, Near The End Of His Life, "if I Repent Of Anything It Is Likely To Be My Good Behaviour.

The Duty Of A Patriot Is To Protect His Country From Its Government.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

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?

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

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

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.

The Gurus Come From The Sickliest Nation On Earth To Tell Us How To Live. And We Pay Them For It.

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

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

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.

When I Hear The Word 'culture', I Reach For My Checkbook.

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.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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

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

Why Do I Live In The Desert? Because The Desert Is The *locus Dei*.

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

One Thing More Dangerous Than Getting Between A Grizzly Sow And Her Cub Is Getting Between A Businessman And A Dollar Bill.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Life Is Unfair. And It's Not Fair That Life Is Unfair.

Little Boys Love Machines; Girls Adore Horses; Grown-up Men And Women Like To Walk.

The Very Poor Are Strictly Materialistic. It Takes Money To Be A Mystic.

There Comes A Time In The Life Of Us All When We Must Lay Aside Our Books Or Put Down Our Tools And Leave Our Place Of Work And Walk Forth On The Road To Meet The Enemy Face-to-face. Once And For All And At Last

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Dirk Kempthorne

Category