150 Quotes by Gary Snyder

You don’t want to be victimized by your lesser talents.

You must realize that these are abnormal times and there’s no way that any of us can keep ourselves pure.

Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars – and goes yet beyond that – beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us – Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife.

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.

There are two things that are really educational. One is being with a bunch of really smart people. The other is being all by yourself.

Revolutionary consciousness is to be found among the most ruthlessly exploited masses: animals, trees, water, air, grasses.

We all receive, every day, the gifts of the Deep World, from the air we breathe to the food we eat.

We are, after all, an animal that was brought into being on this biosphere by these processes of sun and water and lead. And if we depart too far from them, we’re departing too far from the mother, from our heritage.

Today we are aware as never before of the plurality of human life-styles and possibilities, while at the same time being tied, like in an old silent movie, to a runaway locomotive rushing headlong toward a very singular catastrophe.