# Quote — Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

> This is the most beautiful place on earth.
>
> There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome — there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment.

- Author: [Edward Abbey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey.md)
- Book: [Desert Solitaire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire.md)
- Page: 1
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#Desert_Solitaire_(1968)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/this-is-the

## More from this book

> But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us — if only we were worthy of it.

p. 147 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/but-the-love.md)

> Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.

p. 233 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/balance-thats-the.md)

> Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

p. 148 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/wilderness-is-not.md)