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Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith.

— Peter Matthiessen Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)

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More quotes by 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.

The Snow Leopard (1978)

Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaningless, for no amount of “progress” can take its place.

The Snow Leopard (1978)

I have often tried to isolate that quality of "Zen" which attracted me so powerfully to its literature and later to the practice of zazen.

Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)

Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron.

The Snow Leopard (1978)

For the writer, therefore the reader, fresh truth is exhilarating, even painful truth, as in Kafka or Céline.

The Paris Review interview (1999)

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Matthiessen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.