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The Earth Is Not A Mechanism But An Organism, A Being With Its Own Life And Its Own Reasons, Where The Support And Sustenance Of The Human Animal Is Incidental. If Man In His Newfound Power And Vanity Persists In The Attempt To Remake The Planet In His Own Image, He Will Succeed Only In Destroying Himself - Not The Planet. The Earth Will Survive Our Most Ingenious Folly.

-Edward Abbey

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The Earth Is Not

Edward Abbey

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The Earth Is Not A Mechanism But An Organism, A Being With Its Own Life And Its Own Reasons, Where The Support And Sustenance Of The Human Animal Is Incidental. If Man In His Newfound Power And Vanity Persists In The Attempt To Remake The Planet In His Own Image, He Will Succeed Only In Destroying Himself - Not The Planet. The Earth Will Survive Our Most Ingenious Folly.

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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.

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.

As A Confirmed Melancholic, I Can Testify That The Best And Maybe Only Antidote For Melancholia Is Action. However, Like Most Melancholics, I Suffer Also From Sloth.

The Rich Are Not Very Nice. That's Why They're Rich.

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.

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.

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

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

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Rebel Is Doomed To A Violent Death. The Rest Of Us Can Look Forward To Sedated Expiration In A Coma Inside An Oxygen Tent, With Tubes Inserted In Every Bodily Orifice.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

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.

There Is A Deep, Abiding, Unshakable Satisfaction In A Life Of Complete Failure.

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

A City Man Is A Home Anywhere, For All Big Cities Are Much Alike. But A Country Man Has A Place Where He Belongs, Where He Always Returns, And Where, When The Time Comes, He Is Willing To Die.

Has Joy Any Survival Value In The Operations Of Evolution? I Suspect That It Does; I Suspect That The Morose And Fearful Are Doomed To Quick Extinction. Where There Is No Joy There Can Be No Courage; And Without Courage All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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.

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

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.

I Am Pleased Enough With The Surfaces - In Fact They Alone Seem To Me To Be Of Much Importance. Such Things For Example As The Grasp Of A Child's Hand In Your Own, The Flavor Of An Apple, The Embrace Of A Friend Or Lover, The Silk Of A Girl's Thigh, The Sunlight On The Rock And Leaves, The Feel Of Music, The Bark Of A Tree, The Abrasion Of Granite And Sand, The Plunge Of Clear Water Into A Pool, The Face Of The Wind - What Else Is There? What Else Do We Need?

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

Don't Talk To Me About Other Worlds, Separate Realities, Lost Continents Or Invisible Realms -- I Know Where I Belong. Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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

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

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

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

The More Fantastic An Ideology Or Theology, The More Fanatic Its Adherents.

Life Is Cruel? Compared To What?

Nearly All Of Latin America, From Chile To Mexico, Is One Long Rack Of Torture. Financed, Equipped, And Refined By The U.s. Government.

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

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Tofu And Futons. The Adepts Of Orientalism Seem To Spend Most Of Their Lives Reclining. They Can't Quite Summon The Energy To Crawl Up Onto A Chair. Even Their Yogic Exercises Are Carried Out In A Prone Or Sitting Position.

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

Some Of My Ancestors Fought In The American Revolution. A Few More Wore Red Coats, A Few Wore Blue Coats, And The Rest Wore No Coats At All. We Never Did Figure Out Who Won That War.

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

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.

In The Dog-eat-dog Economy, The Doberman Is Boss.

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

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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.

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.

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

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

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

High Technology Has Done Us One Great Service: It Has Retaught Us The Delight Of Performing Simple And Primordial Tasks - Chopping Wood, Building A Fire, Drawing Water From A Spring

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

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

Romanticism Was More Than Merely An Alternative To A Sterile Classicism; Romanticism Made Possible, Especially In Art, A Great Expansion Of The Human Consciousness.

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

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 Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

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

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

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.

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

To The Question: Wilderness, Who Needs It? Doc Would Say: Because We Like The Taste Of Freedom, Comrades. Because We Like The Smell Of Danger. But, Thought Hayduke, What About The Smell Of Fear, Dad?

Alaska's Chief Attractions Are: (a) Its Small And Insignificant Human Population, Thanks To The Miserable Climate; And (b) Its Large And Magnificent Wildlife Population, Thanks To (a). Both Of These Attractions Are Being Rapidly Diminished, However, By (c) The Law Of Growth And Space-age Sleaze.

There Never Was A Good War Or A Bad Revolution.

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

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.

Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County: Any Town With Thirteen Churches And Only Four Bars Has Got An Incipient Social Problem. That Town Is Looking For Trouble.

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

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.

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

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

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.

A Rancher Is A Farmer Who Farms The Public Lands With A Herd Of Four-legged Lawn Mowers.

So I Write Mainly For The Fun Of It, The Hell Of It, The Duty Of It. I Enjoy Writing And Will Probably Be A Scribbler On My Dying Day, Sprawled On Some Stony Trail Halfway Between Two Dry Waterholes.

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

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

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

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.

Death Is Every Man's Final Critic. To Die Well You Must Live Bravely.

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

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

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

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

One Of The Pleasant Things About Small Town Life Is That Everyone, Whether Rich Or Poor, Liked Or Disliked, Has Some Kind Of A Role And Place In The Community. I Never Felt That Living In A City - As I Once Did For A Couple Of Years.

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

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?

A Pretty Girl Can Do No Wrong.

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.

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

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.

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

Paradise For A Happy Man Lies In His Own Good Nature.

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.

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.

Life Imitates Art -- But Badly.

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

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

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

In The Modern Technoindustrial Culture, It Is Possible To Proceed From Infancy Into Senility Without Ever Knowing Manhood.

The Absurd Vanity Of Metaphysicians Who Like To Imagine That They Create The World By Thinking About It.

Music Endures And Ages Far Better Than Books. Books, Made Of Words, Are Unavoidably Attached To Ideas, Events, Conflict, And History, But Music Has The Power To Transcend Time. At Least For A Time. Palestrina Sounds As Fresh Today As He Did In 1555, But Dante, Only Three Centuries Older, Already Smells Of The Archaic, The Medieval, The Catacombs.

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

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.

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

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

My Notion Of A Great Novel Is Something Like A Five-hundred-page Shaggy-dog Story, With Only The Punch Line Omitted.

All Governments Require Enemy Governments.

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

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.

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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

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

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.

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

The Function Of An Ideal Is Not To Be Realized But, Like That Of The North Star, To Serve As A Guiding Point.

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.

Mozart, Striving For Perfection, Wrote The Same Symphony Forty-one Times. In His Case, It Worked. He Wrote A Perfect Symphony.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Taxation: How The Sheep Are Shorn.

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

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

What Draws Us Into The Desert Is The Search For Something Intimate In The Remote.

I Wait. Now The Night Flows Back, The Mighty Stillness Embraces And Includes Me; I Can See The Stars Again And The World Of Starlight. I Am Twenty Miles Or More From The Nearest Fellow Human, But Instead Of Loneliness I Feel Loveliness. Loveliness And A Quiet Exultation.

Writers Should Avoid The Academy. When A Writer Begins To Accept Pay For Talking About Words, We Know What He Will Produce Soon: Nothing But Words.

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.

As Mark Twain Said, 'i Love Wagner -- If Only They'd Cut Out All That Damned Singing!'

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

This Is The Most Beautiful Place On Earth. There Are Many Such Places. Every Man, Every Woman, Carries In Heart And Mind The Image Of The Ideal Place, The Right Place, The One True Home, Known Or Unknown, Actual Or Visionary.

My Own Ambition, My Deepest And Truest Ambition, Is To Find Within Myself Someday, Somehow, The Ability To Do Likewise, To Do Nothing - And Find It Enough.

Reincarnation? There Is Such A Thing. What Could Be More Mozartian Than The Nutcracker Suite?

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

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

The Ideal Kitchen-sink Novel: Throw In Everything But The Kitchen Sink. Then Add The Kitchen Sink.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

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

All Men Are Brothers, We Like To Say, Half-wishing Sometimes In Secret It Were Not True. But Perhaps It Is True. And Is The Evolutionary Line From Protozoan To Spinoza Any Less Certain? That Also May Be True. We Are Obliged, Therefore, To Spread The News, Painful And Bitter Though It May Be For Some To Hear, That All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

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

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

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