There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes.… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In the boulder at my back, there is a shudder, so slight that at another time it might have gone unnoticed. The… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“There is a silence in the imminence of animals and also in the echo of their noise, but the dread silence is… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form…the cosmic… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“The light irradiates white peaks of Annapurna marching down the sky, in the great rampart that spreads east and west for eighteen… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “I was there!”-surely… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“A far cicada rings high and clear over the river’s heavy wash. Morning glory, a lone dandelion, cassia, orchids. So far from… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks,… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“free life” as described by a mountaineer: “The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In what is now known as Bodh Gaya…a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or “enlightenment… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all. — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“...experience was static in the valley; it was older than time itself, for time was a thing of but two generations, dated by moons… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it “has no patience with… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
For some time I watch the coming of the night? Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful but it can never be sculpture. Captive to… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “I was there!”-surely that is… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
![“There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look…” quote by Peter Matthiessen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/86b/peter-matthiessen-5795_deep-sadness_there-s-an-elegiac-quality-in-watching-a_1276424.jpg)
