Edward Abbey Quotes

Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite and their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some mood of fury.

I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.

I am attached to the west coast of Scotland - it's gorgeous to look at and challenging. You have to contend with the possibility of being blown away or rained on. And in the summer months you can be eaten alive by midges.

I really feel that my body craves to be in the mountains or by the ocean or in the countryside.

I like to be grounded by nature, go hiking... go to an isolated island that's not glamorous and touristy at all.

I'm happiest walking through fields, on beaches, and over riverbanks. Nature is my surrogate mother.

When you're outside, and everything is highland, it's like nature has its own sound, and that's one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.

O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood; Land of the mountain and the flood!

Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain, And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.

I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.

I walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven.

If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.

Beautiful things like nature inspire me. Sunrise is my favorite time of the day. A sky full of stars can be very inspiring. Quiet moments where you're alone with yourself and the beauty, nature, and majesty that God has created. That is pretty inspiring.

When we accept our own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and we are no longer poignantly aware of it anymore, but neither would we forsake it or disclaim it either. Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she leaps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.

You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.

A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the stars, the heavens, and the flowers, to say nothing of Spring, love, and dogs.

I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of Nature, always kept it beautiful.

Running cleared the day's cobwebs from my mind and focused my thinking, and gave me time and space to sort out anything that was bothering me, or to detach and think of nothing at all. When it's pouring rain and you're bowling along through the wet, there's satisfaction in knowing you're out there and the others aren't.

It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning.

In harmony with cosmic sea, true love needs no company. It can cure the soul, it can make it whole, if dogs run free.

For lonely people, rain is a chance to be touched.

He was silent for a moment, staring out the window into the rain; I imagined he was contemplating the fact that his family's presence was turning the locals into giant dogs.

But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.