Quotes from book
Desert Solitaire
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness is an autobiographical work by American writer Edward Abbey, originally published in 1968. His fourth book and his first book-length non-fiction work, it follows three fictional books: Jonathan Troy , The Brave Cowboy , and Fire on the Mountain . Although it initially garnered little attention, Desert Solitaire was eventually recognized as an iconic work of nature writing and a staple of early environmentalist writing, bringing Abbey critical acclaim and popularity as a writer of environmental, political, and philosophical issues.
"Down the River", p. 148
Desert Solitaire (1968)
“Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”
"Water", p. 113; this is often quoted as simply: Without courage, all other virtues are useless. <!-- Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 (1994) p. 207 -->
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: 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.
“An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.”
Source: Desert Solitaire
“A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.”
"Water", p. 104
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)
Preface (dated June 1987) for 1988 reprint of Desert Solitaire
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
Source: Desert Solitaire
“Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.”
"Cliffrose and Bayonets", p. 37
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)
"The Heart of Noon", p. 116
Desert Solitaire (1968)
"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)
"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)
"The First Morning", p. 7
Desert Solitaire (1968)
