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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.

— 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)

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

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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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

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.