Abbey Quotes

How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit. ~ Edward Abbey

We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races
by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character. ~ Edward Abbey

The only thing left worth saving is wilderness. ~ Edward Abbey

And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests. ~ Edward Abbey

The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information. ~ Edward Abbey

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view. ~ Edward Abbey

How can I be so evil? It ain't easy. ~ Edward Abbey

The dead man's nephew, excused from this duty, walks far ahead out of earshot. We are free as we go stumbling and sweating along to say exactly what we please, without fear of offending. "Heavy son of a bitch. ... " "All blown up like he is, you'd think he'd float like a balloon." "Let's just hope he don't explode." "He won't. We let the gas out." "What about lunch?" somebody asks; "I'm hungry." "Eat this." "Why'd the bastard have to go so far from the road?" "There's something leaking out that zipper." "Never mind, let's try to get in step here," the sheriff says. "Goddamnit, Floyd, you got big feet." "Are we going in the right direction?" "I wonder if the old fart would walk part way if we let him out of that bag?" "He won't even say thank you for the ride." "Well I hope this learned him a lesson, goddamn him. I guess he'll stay put after this. ... " Thus we meditate upon the stranger's death. ~ Edward Abbey

A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse. ~ Edward Abbey

Abbey, with a cheap beer nestled in his hand, says simply, "Desolation in my heart. ~ Sean Prentiss

In the end, to do a good accent, you just have to be a good listener. ~ Abbey Lee Kershaw

The artist labors while he may, But finds at best too brief the day; And, tho' his works outlast the time And nation that they make sublime, He feels and sees that Nature knows Nothing of time in what she does, But has a leisure infinite Wherein to do her work aright. ~ Henry Abbey

What most people really desire is something quite different from industrial gimmickry- liberty, spontaneity, nakedness, mystery, wildness, wilderness. ~ Edward Abbey

A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner. ~ Edward Abbey

No end of blessings from heaven and earth. As we climb up out of the Moab valley and reach the high tableland stretching northward, traces of snow flying across the road, the sun emerges clear of the overcast, burning free on the very edge of the horizon. For a few minutes the whole region from the canyon of the Colorado to the Book Cliffs - crag, mesa, turret, dome, canyon wall, plain, swale and dune - glows with a vivid amber light against the darkness on the east. At the same time I see a mountain peak rising clear of the clouds, old Tukuhnikivats fierce as the Matterhorn, snowy as Everest, invincible. "Ferris, stop this car. Let's go back." But he only steps harder on the gas. "No," he says, "you've got a train to catch." He sees me craning my neck to stare backward. "Don't worry," he adds, "it'll all still be here next spring." The ~ Edward Abbey

I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism. ~ Edward Abbey

It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come. ~ Edward Abbey

Most every charge you level at American capitalism applies with equal force to communism, with this nice difference, that the Reds make no pretense at such frivolities as civil liberties or environmentalism. The differences in degree are so great that they result in a radical difference in kind. ~ Edward Abbey

Vaughan Telecom installers and contractors ensure the highest quality service for data and network cabling in Toronto and GTA area. ~ Edward Abbey

If I were to ask about my seven months at the Abbey, "Did it work, did I solve my problems?" the simple answer would be, "It did not work, it did not solve my problems." And I know that a year, two years, or even a lifetime as a Trappist monk would not have "worked" either. Because a monastery is not built to solve problems but to praise the Lord in the midst of them. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing. ~ Edward Abbey

You never know what will save you. ~ Abbey Wilson

What could she have done? She was a heroine, and with that came certain obligations. ~ Emily C.A. Snyder

I mean, you can't walk down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a strapless dress, it just won't happen - it has to suit the grandeur of that aisle, it's enormous. ~ Bruce Oldfield

There is a kind of poetry in simple fact. ~ Edward Abbey

Out there in the middle of the maelstrom the Eater awaits, heaving and gulping, its mouth like a giant clam's . . . its mind a frenzy of beige-colored rapid foam. A horrifying uproar, all things considered. Imagine floating through that nonsense in a life jacket. - EDWARD ABBEY ~ Kevin Fedarko

Why do we have to go to Summerwind Abbey tonight? Why couldn't we have waited until I at least combed the sand out of my hair? She heard the whine in her voice and realized she'd been reduced to petulance. With any luck at all, she'd become a nag and make Jermyn a dreadful wife. ~ Christina Dodd

The more I dim my eyes over print and frazzle my brain over abstract ideas, the more I appreciate the delight of being basically an animal wrapped in a sensitive skin: sex, the resistance of rock, the taste and touch of snow, the feel of the sun, good wine and a rare beefsteak and the company of friends around a fire with a guitar and lousy old cowboy songs. Despair: I'll never be a scholar, never be a decent good Christian. Just a hedonist, a pagan, a primitive romantic ~ Edward Abbey

What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty - this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk - yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattle ~ Edward Abbey

I can't stop staring at my beautiful new baby. ~ Abbey Clancy

Walter looked like he could chew nails and still come back for a helping of chain link fence. "Why can't Romeo and Juliet meet in a garden like in Downton Abbey?" Romeo asked. "I mean who meets on a balcony? How real is that? ~ Suzanne M. Trauth

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others. ~ Edward Abbey

You could, if you wanted to, spend your entire life in a sitting position. When you weren't lying down. ~ Edward Abbey

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh. But I can promise you that my dainty little self can handle my own." ~ Abbey ~ Jennifer Hines

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

'Downton Abbey' didn't have the impact it had just because it was a good story about people. It was something about that period and that world that was fascinating to people on a level that wasn't just as an entertainment. ~ Noah Hawley

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse. ~ Edward Abbey

You want me to have feelings?" he said. "I already told you that I love you. What else should I say? That I long to be near you every second of every day? I see colors, only around you ... I smell perfume, only around you. God, it's like ... like I'm alive again. Sometimes I go crazy just wondering if I imagined it all, and I wait to see when it ... you ... will be taken away from me."
"I feel all these things, Abbey," he continued on. "Rage that I can't run my fingers through your hair. Sorrow that I can't lay my face next to yours. Agony that I can't steal the breath from your lips. I can't eat or breathe or sleep for wanting to touch you, and yet I don't eat or breathe or sleep. I'm just here. Stuck in between. ~ Jessica Verday

Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful. ~ Edward Abbey

The chi of a room is important to me. If I walk into a hotel room and it doesn't feel right, I ask to change. ~ Abbey Lee Kershaw

Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither. ~ Edward Abbey

America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings. ~ Edward Abbey

Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February. ~ Edward Abbey

Being married to a footballer is some girls' dream, but it isn't always like that. I work. ~ Abbey Clancy

Eril-Fane let out a slow breath. "Were you afraid of the dark as a child?"
A chill snaked up Lazlo's spine. He thought again of the crypt at the abbey, and the nights locked in with dead monks. "Yes," he said simply.
"Even when you knew, rationally, that there was nothing in it that could harm you."
"Yes."
"Well. We are all children in the dark, here in Weep. ~ Laini Taylor

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws. ~ Edward Abbey

Life without music would be an intolerable insult. ~ Edward Abbey

My mum taught me to always make sure you protect your skin with SPF. I always make sure I put my St. Tropez SPF on my face every morning, no matter the weather, before I go out of the house. ~ Abbey Clancy

Music is a savage art, a measured madness. ~ Edward Abbey

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense. ~ Edward Abbey

Though I've lived in the rural West most of my life, I never once fell in love with a horse. Not once. Neither end. ~ Edward Abbey

I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be. ~ Edward Abbey

Obviously, I play a villain in 'Downton Abbey'. As an actor, you want to get a variety of roles, so to be offered the part of Joe, it was perfect. ~ Rob James-Collier

Rocks, like louseworts and snail darters and pupfish and 3rd-world black, lesbian, militant poets, have rights, too. Especially the right to exist. ~ Edward Abbey

But love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had eyes to see. ~ Edward Abbey

The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life," the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness." He sipped at his bourbon and ice. "Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal." Another thought. "And the universe goes mad. ~ Edward Abbey

When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management. ~ Edward Abbey

Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.
Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures. ~ Edward Abbey

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students. ~ Edward Abbey

Only the half-mad are wholly alive. ~ Edward Abbey

A man without a horse is like a man without a weapon: stunted and naked. ~ Edward Abbey

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. ~ Charles Dickens

Such a narrative as this demands some sort of physical consolation for its spiritual tribulation. Our heroine received it in one last cup of tea. The reader may be advised to do so likewise. ~ Emily C.A. Snyder

Man was created to complete the horse. ~ Edward Abbey

England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country. ~ Edward Abbey

I remember hearing the song when I was 12 or 14 in - it must have been in Chicago, 'cause we didn't have a radio on the farm, and it was during the second World War. I had three brothers in that war who went overseas. ~ Abbey Lincoln

For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself. ~ Edward Abbey

I am a huge 'Downton Abbey' fan - huge! ~ Joan Rivers

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

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned. ~ Edward Abbey

You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?" he murmurs. "That you're mine for life?"
I nod, mutely.
"Thank you for that," he says. "Because I'm yours, too. ~ Heather Cocks

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. ~ Edward Abbey

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world ... ~ Edward Abbey

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre. ~ Lynn Abbey

I can't believe this heat," Abbey said, taking her tunic and pulling it over her head. Underneath was a form-fitting top that showed a figure unaccustomed to idleness or excess. Kip stared at her the way he had at the shiney curves of the steel horse back in the garage. "Can you imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago, when weather changed just a few times a year?" she said, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. "Yeah, it must have looked great," Kip said. "What do you mean looked great?" Abbey said, turning her eye on Kip. "Must have been great, like you said," he corrected. ~ Shawn Keenan

Anyway." I cleared my throat loudly. "Thank you again for the beautiful necklace. It's perfect, and I love it. Where did you find it? I've never seen anything like it before."
It was his turn to look embarrassed and he ducked his head. "That's because I made it." He peeked up at me, and my heart melted. Am I dreaming? This has to be a dream.
"You made it?" Something wet hit my cheek and I brushed it away, impatiently waiting for his answer.
"Yeah," he said shyly. "I did. ~ Jessica Verday

In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth. ~ Edward Abbey

He didn't want me to get hurt? Wow. Just wow. I might actually be close to a swoon here ~ Jessica Verday

Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care. ~ Edward Abbey

I don't like being weak in front of my mum or anyone for that matter. I don't like crying. ~ Abbey Clancy

My favourite outfit was this black lace dress that I found in a vintage shop in Williamsburg, New York. ~ Abbey Lee Kershaw

I get invited to a lot more glamorous parties since I've been in 'Downton Abbey,' which has made me much more fashion conscious. ~ Lesley Nicol

With 'Downton Abbey,' you're always stuck in one stately home. ~ Kit Harington

'Downton Abbey' is one of my favourite shows ever - it's just beautifully filmed, and the stories and characters are so wonderful. ~ Amanda Donohoe

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders. ~ Edward Abbey

I'd learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I'd learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about. ~ Gerry Abbey

A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously. ~ Edward Abbey

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written. ~ Edward Abbey

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. ~ Edward Abbey

The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness. ~ Edward Abbey

One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever-and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage. ~ Edward Abbey

There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice. ~ Edward Abbey

I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake. ~ Edward Abbey

Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies. ~ Edward Abbey

When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you've got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon when necessary.

That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt – unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey.

Fortunately for us we have just the man. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

High above our heads the owl hoots under the lost moon. A pre-dawn wind comes sifting and sighing through the cottonwood trees; the sound of their dry, papery leaves is like the murmur of distant water, or like the whispering of ghosts in an ancient, empty, condemned cathedral. ~ Edward Abbey

One of her parlour borders, Miss Harriet Smith, married a local farmer, Robert Martin, and is very happily settled. They have three daughters and a son, but the doctor has told her it is unlikely that further children can be expected and she and her husband are anxious to have another son as playmate to their own. Mr and Mrs Knightley of Donwell Abbey are the most important couple in Highbury, and Mrs Knightley is a friend of Mrs Martin and has always taken a keen interest in her children. ~ P.D. James

Look, it comes down to whether or not you love me! That's all! That's it! The rest is detail ~ Tom Branson

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying
a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour. ~ Edward Abbey