Abbey Quotes & Sayings

Omnivorous red devils with a vicious bite, they have denuded the ground surrounding their hill, destroying everything green and living within a radius of ten feet. I cannot resist the impulse to shove my walking stick into the bowels of their hive and rowel things up. Don't actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires. Compared to ants the hairy scorpion is a beast of charm, dignity and — Edward Abbey

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

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

To undermine a person's self-respect is a sin. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery — Abbey Strauss

In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall. — Thomas B. Macaulay

James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end. — Edward Abbey

It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave. — Edward Abbey

Art, science, philosophy, religion
each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience. — Edward Abbey

It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and
preserve it. — Edward Abbey

You can never go wrong cuttin' fence,' repeated Smith, warming to his task. (Pling!) "Always cut fence. That's the law west of the 100th meridian. East of that don't matter none. Back there it's all lost anyhow. But west, we cut fence,' (Plang!) — Edward Abbey

For what I was to see at the abbey would make me think that it is often inquisitors who create heretics. — Umberto Eco

Might does not make right but it sure makes what is. — Edward Abbey

The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an equalizer. — Edward Abbey

For the last episode [of Downton Abbey], you'll need some handkerchiefs. I needed handkerchiefs reading it. It wasn't because it necessarily moved me while reading it, but it was the experience of reading it when I realized it was the last time I was ever going to be reading one of those scripts. That was quite terminal. — Hugh Bonneville

Not all questions can be answered. — Edward Abbey

[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine. — Edward Abbey

How can you do it, Abbey? How can you love me? I have nothing to offer. Nothing to give you. I don't even know how long I'll stay like this. -Caspian — Jessica Verday

All governments, Books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all the stark realities that men have made, Are but imagination's utterances. — Henry Abbey

I believe you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I would love to be in 'Downton Abbey.' That's the thing I thing many people would have a good laugh with me saying anything like that. I feel like that's the next phase of my career. To reprove to everyone that I can do things besides the crazy characters. — Ari Graynor

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate. — Edward Abbey

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath. — Lynn Abbey

Susan Sontag: What she really wanted, throughout her career, was to grow up to be a Frenchman. — Edward Abbey

Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person. — Edward Abbey

I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain. — Edward Abbey

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth. — Edward Abbey

The shock of the real. — Edward Abbey

There is a certain animal vitality in most of us which carries us through any trouble but the absolutely overwhelming. Only a fool has no sorrow, only an idiot has no grief - but then only a fool and an idiot will let grief and sorrow ride him down into the grave. — Edward Abbey

The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining. — Edward Abbey

Grand opera is a form of musical entertainment for people who hate music. — Edward Abbey

The GDP rises whenever money changes hands ... The whole thing is reminiscent of Edward Abbey's reflection that growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. — John Robbins

Good heaven! My dear Isabella, what do you mean? Can you
can you really be in love with James? — Jane Austen

Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses ... — Edward Abbey

Whenever I read _Time_ or _Newsweek_ or such magazines, I wash my hands afterward. But how to wash off the small but odious stain such reading leaves on the mind? — Edward Abbey

It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world-Nature-is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it. — Edward Abbey

Platitude: a statement that denies by implication what it explicitly affirms. — Edward Abbey

The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies. — Julian Fellowes

Like Melrose Abbey, large cities should especially be viewed by moonlight. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

Narrow-minded provincialism: Sad to say but true
I am more interested in the mountain lions of Utah, the wild pigs of Arizona, than I am in the fate of all the Arabs of Araby, all the Wogs of Hindustan, all the Ethiopes of Abyssinia ... — 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

Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United. — Abbey Clancy

By the age of forty, a man is responsible for his face. And his fate. — Edward Abbey

The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient. — Edward Abbey

Why I oppose the nuclear-arms race: I prefer the human race. — Edward Abbey

The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience. — Edward Abbey

That's the master bedchamber, remember? You've been there collecting my underwear."
"That's right. You're the swine who sent me on a fool's errand when you could have gone yourself." She observed his expression. "You did go yourself!"
"I saw you there," he admitted.
"Did I call you a swine?"
Remembering the drama with which she sneaked into Summerwind Abbey, she didn't know whether to laugh or shout. "Louse, rather!"
"Yes, but you must forgive me. Being a louse is my nature. — Christina Dodd

The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both. — Edward Abbey

I cannot paint what then I was. — William Wordsworth

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers. — Edward Abbey

If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain. — Edward Abbey

I'm a writer first and an editor second ... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command. — Lynn Abbey

Modern men and women are obsessed with the sexual; it is the only realm of primordial adventure still left to most of us. Like apes in a zoo, we spend our energies on the one field of play remaining; human lives otherwise are pretty well caged in by the walls, bars, chains, and locked gates of our industrial culture. — Edward Abbey

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss. — Edward Abbey

Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role. — Edward Abbey

It sounds like you aren't used to having something so powerful between your legs," Abbey said. "Maybe you should let me drive. — Shawn Keenan

My name is Abbey. And I'm in love with a ghost. — Jessica Verday

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed. — Edward Abbey

I wish to be
an inspector of volcanoes.
I want to study cloud formations
and memorize the wind
and learn by heart the habits of
the ponderosa pine. — Edward Abbey

There is a wine called Easy Days and Mellow Nights, well-known on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation. It is an economical wine, fortified with the best of intentions, and I recommend it to every serious wino. — Edward Abbey

It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle. — Lynn Abbey

We worked the medley on side two of "Abbey Road" out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine. — George Harrison

Be a half-assed crusader, a part-time fanatic. Don't worry to much about the fate of the world. Saving the world is only a hobby. Get out there and enjoy the world, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, husbands wives; climb mountains, run rivers, get drunk, do whatever you want to do while you can, before it's too late. — Edward Abbey

Fashion definitely has the power to change the world. — Abbey Clancy

Beneath the haunted castle lies the dungeon keep: the womb from whose darkness the ego first emerged, the tomb to which it knows it must return at last. Beneath the crumbling shell or paternal authority, lies the maternal blackness, imagined by the Gothic writer as a prison, as a torture chamber- from which the cries of the kidnapped anima cannot even be heard. The upper and the lower levels of the ruined castle or abbey represent the contradictory fears at the heart of Gothic terror: dread of the superego, whose splendid battlements have been battered but not quite cast down- and of the id, whose buried darkness abounds in dark visions no stormer of the castle had ever touched. — Leslie A. Fiedler

Saving the world was merely a hobby. My *vocation* has been that of
inspector of desert water holes. — Edward Abbey

In the end, for all our differences and conflicts, most women and men share the same food, work, shelter, bed, life, joy, anguish, and fate. We need each other. — Edward Abbey

Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime. — Edward Abbey

In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her as not unlikely, that she might that morning have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman's confinement - might have been within a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what part of the Abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which yet bore the traces of monastic division? — Jane Austen

Marvelously clear-fretted in the unsmoked air, the Abbey rose, silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed. I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go o look at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close. — John Wyndham

Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people - the following preparations would be essential: — Edward Abbey

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer. — Lynn Abbey

Love is the key-note of the universe
The theme, the melody. — Henry Abbey

Abbey was born to sophistication, whereas I was more Barbara than Buckingham Palace Windsor. — Samantha Tonge

The itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. Let them and leave them alone
they'll survive for a few more thousand years, more or less, without any glorification from us. — Edward Abbey

Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them; it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it. — Edward Abbey

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite? — Edward Abbey

All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love
and most of all, an audience! — Edward Abbey

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. — Edward Abbey

In marriage, the occasional catastrophic crisis is easier to manage than the daily routine. — Edward Abbey

Would you do it if you were me?
If I was you I'd do whatever you would do. — Edward Abbey

Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties. — Edward Abbey

When in doubt about drinking from an unknown spring look for life. If the water is scummed with algae, crawling with worms, grubs, larvae, spiders and liver flukes, be reassured, drink hearty, you'll get nothing worse than dysentery. But if it appears innocent and pure, beware. — Edward Abbey

I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife. — 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

There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed. — Edward Abbey

She pursed her lips and nodded, swiveling around to continue her survey of my modest living space. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest as she strolled around. Letting out a long, deep breath, she dropped her hands to her sides when she reached my DVD collection.
"Downton Abbey?"
I jolted forward, clearing my throat. "Yeah, it's uh ... it's a good show. — Rachael Wade

Why must love always be accompanied
sooner or later
by sorrow and pain? Why not? Because pure bliss is for pure idiots. — 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

My most memorable hikes can be classified as 'Shortcuts that Backfired'. — Edward Abbey

I'm your other half. ( ... ) I'll carry your heartbeat in mine. — Jessica Verday

I am the first instrument. I am the voice. I do not imitate other instruments. Other instruments imitate me. — Abbey Lincoln

Hard times are a-coming, and people without useful, practical skills are going to suffer. Or suffer most. — Edward Abbey

By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century. — Edward Abbey

The mountains loomed over the valley like a psychical presence, a source and mirror of nervous influences, emotions, subtle and unlabeled aspirations; no man could ignore that presence; in an underground poker game, in the vaults of the First National Bank, in the secret chambers of The Factory, in the backroom of the realtor's office during the composition of an intricate swindle, in the heart of a sexual embrace, the emanations of mountain and sky imprinted some analogue of their nature on the evolution and shape of every soul. — Edward Abbey

Concrete is heavy; iron is hard - but the grass will prevail. — Edward Abbey

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun. — Edward Abbey

If I hadn't got into comedy, I wouldn't have met Abbey, my wife, and I wouldn't have my two girls, and the whole thing unravels. That's the thing about being basically - whisper it quietly - happy, is that you don't really want to change anything, because once you start changing stuff, then what you've got all disappears. — Robert Webb

Why, Hurst couldn't have hit the side of Westminster Abbey with a pistol, even by throwing the silly thing. — Patricia Cabot

In clear-cutting, he said, you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls "weed trees," and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. You then dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed-away humus, inject the seedlings with growth-forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellants and raise a uniform crop of trees, all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height (not maturity; that takes too long) you send in a fleet of tree-harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, fertilize all over again, round and round and round again, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole. — Edward Abbey

What is love worth in this broken world? Nothing!" he spat. "Absolutely nothing. Love won't feed you. Love won't rescue you from starvation. Grow up, Abbey. I didn't raise you to be half-witted and so mentally defective. — Dan C. Thompson