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
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
Interpretation
Reality must be acknowledged; denying it is foolish.
This quote suggests that accepting the reality of our world and circumstances is crucial for rational thinking. Just as someone milking a cow cannot deny the cow's existence, we must recognize and confront the truths around us to engage with life meaningfully.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental issues, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of recognizing climate change.
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.
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.
Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses
Where we are as a nation is due to having an openness to the people of the world. It's incredibly important. I firmly believe that we cannot shut our borders to immigrants. I think a fair and just immigration policy is good for our country and good for our society.
The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.
No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.
Alone, there is only the person inside. I've grown to like her better than the stuck-up husk of me. Alone, there is no perfect daughter, no gifted high school junior, no Kristina Georgia Snow. There is only Bree." (Ellen Hopkins)
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