Edward Abbey: Living

Edward Abbey was American author and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on living.

Edward Abbey: 292 quotes15 likes

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.”

"Down the River", p. 148
Desert Solitaire (1968)

“His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.”

Edward Abbey

Source: The Journey Home (1977), p. 121
Context: As for the "solitary confinement of the mind," my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

Edward Abbey

Misattributed

“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

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.”

Edward Abbey

“We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”

Edward Abbey

“When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.”

Edward Abbey