The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
One must be reasonable in one's demands on life. For myself, all that I ask is: (1) accurate information; (2) coherent knowledge;… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners -- and the crude vulgarity of their way… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“There was this tendency to drift. And yet when she thought about it, what did she really want to do? Or be?… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Life is a bitch, his dark companion said–and then you die. Not so cried Henry! Life is a glorious shining and splendid… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Those who dream of the joys of living in a space colony should live in a space colony. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“The world is big but it is comprehensible," says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
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… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
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… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
