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Quotes from Desert Solitaire — Edward Abbey

1927–1989 United States

← All quotes by Edward Abbey

15 quotes

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!)

Desert Solitaire (1968)

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

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.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

All living things on earth are kindred.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

I am not an atheist but an earthiest.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

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.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

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.

Desert Solitaire (1968)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Abbey (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.