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Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

Gary Snyder

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Gary Snyder
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: May 8
Environmentalist
Poet
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Gary Snyder
Like
Entering
People
Convince
Philosophy
Literature
Talk
Fourths
Three
Tricked
Trying
Cage
Really
Cages

More quotes by Gary Snyder

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Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
Gary Snyder
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All those years and their moments— Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, Poems tried out on friends, Will be one more archive, One more shaky text.
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Thought is just an apprehension of touch.
Gary Snyder
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What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. It's not a strictly spiritual affair it has psychological roles to fulfill. You might not want it to be a religion based on your own experience but that's like wanting to clean up your dreams
Gary Snyder
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Clambering up the Cold Mountain path, The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass. The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain The pine sings, but there's no wind. Who can leap the world's ties And sit with me among the white clouds?
Gary Snyder
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When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.
Gary Snyder
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A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.
Gary Snyder
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Being the Stream Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.
Gary Snyder
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My Grandmother standing wordless fifteen minutes Between rows of loganberries, clippers poised in her hand.
Gary Snyder
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Sometime in the last ten years the best brains of the Occident discovered to their amazement that we live in an Environment. This discovery has been forced on us by the realization that we are approaching the limits of something.
Gary Snyder
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stay together learn the flowers go light
Gary Snyder
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In Western Civilization, our elders are books.
Gary Snyder
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The mercy of the West has been social revolution the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void.
Gary Snyder
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Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged?
Gary Snyder
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For those who can, one of the things to do is not to move. To stay put. That doesn't mean don't travel it means have a place and get involved in what can be done in that place. That's the only way we're going to have a representative democracy in America. Nobody stays anywhere long enough to take responsibility for a local community.
Gary Snyder
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I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life, And dammit, that’s just what I’ve gone and done.
Gary Snyder
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A great poet does not express his or her self he expresses all of our selves.
Gary Snyder
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True affluence is not needing anything.
Gary Snyder
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You should really know what the complete natural world of your region is and know what all its interactions are and how you are interacting with it yourself. This is just part of the work of becoming who you are, where you are.
Gary Snyder
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Doom scenarios, even though they might be true, are not politically or psychologically effective. The first step . . . is to make us love the world rather than to make us fear for the end of the world.
Gary Snyder