The collection / 108 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1958 AD

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 surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

Edward Abbey / quote

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02c. 1958 AD

Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.

Edward Abbey / quote

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03c. 1958 AD

This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.

Edward Abbey / quote

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04c. 1958 AD

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

Edward Abbey / quote

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05c. 1958 AD

But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.

Edward Abbey / quote

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06c. 1958 AD

The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. ... As a novelist, I want to be more than one more dog barking at the other dogs barking at me. Not out of any foolish hope that one novelist, or all virtuous novelists in chorus, can make much of a difference for good, except in the long run, but out of the need to prevent the human world from relaxing into something worse. To maintain the tension between truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. ... I believe the highest duty of the serious novelist is, whatever the means or technique, to be a critic of his society, to hold society to its own ideals, or if these ideals are unworthy, to suggest better ideals.

Edward Abbey / quote

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07c. 1958 AD

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 / quote

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08c. 1958 AD

If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.

Edward Abbey / quote

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09c. 1958 AD

I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.

Edward Abbey / quote

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10c. 1958 AD

One mile farther and I come to a second grave beside the road, nameless like the other, marked only with the dull blue-black stones of the badlands. I do not pause this time. The more often you stop the more difficult it is to continue. Stop too long and they cover you with rocks.

Edward Abbey / quote

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11c. 1958 AD

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Edward Abbey / quote

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12c. 1958 AD

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.

Edward Abbey / quote

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13c. 1958 AD

What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.

Edward Abbey / quote

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14c. 1958 AD

Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.

Edward Abbey / quote

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15c. 1958 AD

[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.

Edward Abbey / quote

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16c. 1958 AD

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though, I keep a journal, a record book, and most everything begins in the form of notes scribbled down on the pages of that journal.

Edward Abbey / quote

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17c. 1958 AD

Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.

Edward Abbey / quote

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18c. 1958 AD

Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knees and crawl back into the past, to shy from what seem like impossible problems in order to bury the head, asshole aloft and twitching, in the Sands of Time. Cowardice, I calls it. Illusion-seeking. Womb-crawling. And treason. Desertion in the face of the enemy.Strong words indeed. But I've always been rather a blunt, tough, plain-spoken type . . .

Edward Abbey / quote

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19c. 1958 AD

In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much practical interest in what those two sincere and hard-working fellows actually preached.

Edward Abbey / quote

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20c. 1958 AD

The more we learn of outer space and inner space, of quasars and quarks, of Big Bangs and Little Blips, the more remote, abstract and intellectually inconsequential it all becomes.

Edward Abbey / quote

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21c. 1958 AD

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.

Edward Abbey / quote

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22c. 1958 AD

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

Edward Abbey / quote

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23c. 1958 AD

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.

Edward Abbey / quote

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24c. 1958 AD

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?

Edward Abbey / quote

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