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“I wish to be an inspector of volcanoes. I want to study cloud formations and memorize the wind and learn by heart the habits of the ponderosa pine.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Nature #Heart #Clouds
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“Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Lying #Philosophy #Mean
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“So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Pants #Firsts
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“Without courage, all other virtues are useless.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Useless #Virtue
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Mean #Writing #Earthquakes
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“There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Beautiful #Men #Down And
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“Life is unfair. And it's not fair that life is unfair.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Life Is #Life Is Unfair #Unfair
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“In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Rocks #Affair #Lifelong
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“Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Real #America #Earth
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“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Nature #Journey #Clouds
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“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Funny #Political #Scum
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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
#Love #Loyalty #Spiritual
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“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Nature #Insperational #Luxury
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Kings #Years #Realization
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“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Inspirational #Country #Freedom
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Inspirational #Loyalty #Nature
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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
#Dog #Rain #Eye
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Distance #Interesting #Forever
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“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Inspiring #Peace #Diversity
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“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Stupid #Men #Intelligent
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#People #Territory #Facts
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“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.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Girl #Boys #Men
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“Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Gravestone #Epitaph #Please
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“Life is cruel? Compared to what?”
-- Edward Abbey
#Life Is
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“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Wise #Wisdom #Men
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“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Inspirational #Nature #Cancer
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“Let us hope our weapons are never needed -but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Military #Gun #Rights
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“Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Baseball #Hero #Player
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“Life is too tragic for sadness: Let us rejoice.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Sadness #Life Is #Tragic
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“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”
-- Edward Abbey
#Solitude #Depth #Madness
