All Peter Matthiessen Quotes
- You do your best work when you're not conscious of yourself. Best
- The purpose of our life is to help others through it. Help
- In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth. Constraint
- It is said in Java that the tiger's hearing is so acute that hunters must keep their nose hairs cut lest the tiger hear the… Acute
- I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than… American
- I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail. Any
- It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and… Across
- 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 of… Abstractions
- When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning… Abstractions
- Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders Bank
- And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges… Bird
- The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress. Civilization
- The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains… All
- In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us. All
- I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority. Distinguish