Book detail: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book is a narrative set against the backdrop of a barren wilderness, delving into the struggles and resilience of its characters. The story examines the human spirit's capacity to endure and find meaning in the face of adversity.
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“There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“There has never been an 'original' sin: each is quite banal.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Only the half-mad are wholly alive.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“A man is not aware of his virtues (if any). Nevertheless, one hopes that they exist.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“There are circumstances in which suicide presents a viable option; a workable alternative; the only sensible solution.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Life imitates art -- but badly.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“A life without tragedy would not be worth living.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Life is cruel? Compared to what?”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Life without music would be an intolerable insult.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“The greater your dreams, the more terrible your nightmares.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“A mother's sorrow is more true, honorable, and beautiful than the detachment of the sage.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Once upon a time, I dreamed of becoming a great man. Later, a good man. Now, finally, I find it difficult enough and honor enough to be -- a man.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“If you feel that you're not ready to die, never fear; nature will give you complete and adequate assistance when the time comes.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Some lives are tragic, some ridiculous. Most are both at once.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Every moment is precious. And precarious.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“How can I be so evil? It ain't easy.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“No man likes to be smoked out of his hole in February.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“One must be reasonable in one's demands on life. For myself, all that I ask is: (1) accurate information; (2) coherent knowledge; (3) deep understanding; (4) infinite loving wisdom; (5) no more kidney stones, please.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“There is a wine called Easy Days and Mellow Nights, well-known on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation. It is an economical wine, fortified with the best of intentions, and I recommend it to every serious wino.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Mental degeneracy may be caused by lead poisoning. Or by a poor dip in the gene pool.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races -- by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.”
Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness