American author (1927-1989)
Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Water", Desert Solitaire
Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home
Where life is there is death, reasons the vulture, and where there's death there's hope.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night", The Journey Home
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
"Down the River", Desert Solitaire
Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
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.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
Grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You'll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Water", Desert Solitaire
The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home
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.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Walking", The Journey Home
Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Cliffrose and Bayonets", Desert Solitaire
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)