Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Indolence and melancholy are interconnected, where one can lead to the other, creating a cycle of weakness.
In this quote, Edward Abbey reflects on the relationship between indolence (a state of laziness) and melancholy (a feeling of deep sadness). He suggests that these two states of being are mutually reinforcing; when someone is lazy, it can lead to feelings of sadness, and conversely, feeling sad can lead to a lack of motivation or activity. Abbey's choice of words highlights the weakness inherent in these emotions and the profound impact they can have on a person's life.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about mental health and the importance of combating laziness to avoid feelings of sadness.
More from Edward Abbey
All quotes βI 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.
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Place is security, space is freedom.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime β¦ a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.