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
Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.
Interpretation
The speaker finds deep spiritual significance in the desert landscape.
Edward Abbey expresses a profound connection between himself and the desert, suggesting that this arid environment serves as a sacred place, or a 'locus Dei', where he feels a strong spiritual presence. This reflects the idea that natural surroundings can transcend mere physicality and become a source of inspiration and divinity.
In practice
During a nature retreat, to illustrate the spiritual aspect of the landscapes we encounter.
Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
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.
If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.
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.
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.
Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Immortality is like trying to carve your initials in a block of ice in the middle of July.
Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
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