"Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for……" — Peter Matthiessen
"Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came."
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Peter Matthiessen
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35 Quotes by Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen has 35 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of…
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Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had…
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Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being.
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I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow.…
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This world is painted on a wild dark metal
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There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before…
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My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending.
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Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when…
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The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension,…
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I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black…
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Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time,…
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In the clearness of this Himalayan air, mountains draw near, and in such splendor, tears come quietly to my eyes…
See all 35 quotes by Peter Matthiessen »
More Air Quotes
This quote is filed under Air Quotes,
one of 4,448 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Aside from a handful of guys boxing is missing the good trainers, that's why our sport is so in the…
— Alexis Arguello
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Spare me the whispering, crowded room, the friends who come and gape and go, the ceremonious air of gloom -…
— Matthew Arnold
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On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million…
— Diane Ackerman
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It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then…
— Lester Bangs
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Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of…
— Stanley Baldwin
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Lexington did launch its air group when a Japanese carrier was reported.
— Jack Adams
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Kisses, even to the air, are beautiful.
— Drew Barrymore
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I love roller coasters that make my stomach drop. One ride in Las Vegas, the Big Shot, straps you into…
— Drew Barrymore
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Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.
— Mikhail Baryshnikov
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The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.
— Alexander Graham Bell
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A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and…
— Clive Bell
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When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is…
— Hilaire Belloc
See all 4,448 Air Quotes »