The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.
—Peter Matthiessen
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.
—Peter Matthiessen
The insights and epigrams of Alexander Pope weren’t clich