Edward Abbey Desert Quotes

#1. Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)

Edward Abbey

#2. If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.

Edward Abbey

#3. Do the dead sing? Do they love?

Stephen King

#4. The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.

Edward Abbey

#5. My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

Edward Abbey

#6. And the wind blows, the dust clouds darken the desert blue, pale sand and red dust drift across the asphalt trails and tumbleweeds fill the arroyos. Good-bye, come again. (p. 34)

Edward Abbey

#7. I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.

Edward Abbey

#8. Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

Edward Abbey

#9. 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

#10. Saving the world was merely a hobby. My *vocation* has been that of
inspector of desert water holes.

Edward Abbey

#11. I am convinced now that the desert has no heart, that it presents a riddle which has no answer, and that the riddle itself is an illusion created by some limitation or exaggeration of the displaced human consciousness.

Edward Abbey

#12. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

Edward Abbey

#13. Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk.

Francis Chichester

#14. Mountains complement desert as desert compliments city, as wilderness compliments and completes civilization.

Edward Abbey

#15. I do see more and more people who are moving away from traditional religions that exclude others and have hatred as their basis, as part of their ideologies, that conceptualize an angry God that is going to take retribution on all the people who are not a certain way.

Wayne Dyer

#16. If I live the life I'm given, I won't be scared to die.

Colleen Hoover

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.

Edward Abbey

#20. I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Mahatma Gandhi

#21. I will not. I will never surrender. I will fight through to the finsh, whatever the outcome. I will not quit. I will not betray and desert the best thing in my life. No, no, I will not surrender...Earth is the place for love.

Edward Abbey

#22. The desert wears ... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting
but waiting for what?

Edward Abbey