Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
Edward AbbeyRead
By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.
Interpretation
What this quote means
By eighteen, a person has experienced enough to reflect upon throughout their life.
Edward Abbey suggests that by the age of eighteen, individuals have gone through a significant amount of emotional experiences, including both joy and heartache. This wealth of experiences serves as a foundation for deep reflection and personal growth, potentially informing their wisdom and understanding for many years to come.
Themes
ReflectionExperienceWisdomGrowthEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to encourage students to reflect on their past experiences.
More from Edward Abbey
All quotes →I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.
Edward AbbeyRead
If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
Edward AbbeyRead
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
Edward AbbeyRead
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.
Edward AbbeyRead
Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
Edward AbbeyRead
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Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice.
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Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough.
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It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.
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You may never have proof of your importance but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who.
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