quote · Legacy record
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.
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.
Approximate author period: c. 1970 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Peter Matthiessen
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1970 AD · modern
Approximate period for the recorded attribution to Peter Matthiessen, based on documented lifetime 1927 to 2014. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q892108 (checked 2026-10-08). This is not a quotation composition date or independent authentication of its attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q892108 (accessed 2026-10-08).
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 143981; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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