“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. And this debasement of our vision, the 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.”

— Peter Matthiessen, book The Snow Leopard

"October 5", p. 42
The Snow Leopard (1978)

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Peter Matthiessen10

American novelist 1927–2014

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