Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'... But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.' There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot!
Jack Kerouac
Related I don't wanta hear all your word descriptions of words words words you made up all winter, man I wan... JACK KEROUAC Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal con... ANNE CARSON Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cu... BENJAMIN JOHNSON Mixing old wine with new wine is stupidity, but mixing old wisdom with new wisdom is maturity. AMIT KALANTRI his lips drink water but his heart drinks wine E.E. CUMMINGS My path is full of petals–I have swept it for no others. My thatch gate has been closed–but... DU FU People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business. A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground. The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed. The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no diff... The intelligence is proved not by ease of learning, but by understanding what we learn. Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words. Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads Let love through good deeds show. How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. In everyone's heart stirs a great homesickness. That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it. Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience. One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first ti... To reprove small faults within due vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to... Faith is like electricity. You can't see it, but you can see the light. Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of... Some families can trace their ancestors back three hundred years, but can't tell you where their chi... A recent survey was said to prove that the people we Americans most admire are our politicians and d... If a man defrauds you one time, he is a rascal; if he does it twice, you are a fool. Flattery looks like friendship, just like a wolf looks like a dog. Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it ... Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs. Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice. The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous - and friendless. Friendship is love with understanding. So few people think. When we find one who really does, we call him a genius Your life can't go according to plan if you have no plan. Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice; it is an investment. Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue. An expert gossiper knows how much to leave out of a conversation To live so that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip, is to have li... Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind If you would attain greatness, think no little thoughts. We are born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy. People are changed, not by coercion or intimidation, but by example. Children are natural mimics; they act like their parents in spite of every effort to teach them good... The guilty catch themselves. Good habits are formed; bad habits we fall into. If happiness could be brought, few of us could pay the price. Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Hatred is a boomerang which is sure to hit you harder than the one at whom you throw it. Hate pollutes the mind. If we miraculously became the people we hate, how lovable we would find ourselves. To feel "fit as a fiddle" you must tone down your middle. Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it. A patient going to a doctor for his first visit was asked, "And whom did you consult before coming t... "Oh," replied his patient, with no malice aforethought, "he told me to come and see you." It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary. Honesty is a question of right or wrong, not a matter of policy. It is a pleasure to give advice, humiliating to need it, normal to ignore it. It is almost impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside. Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the t... Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for ... Humor - the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole. Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor. "What made the deepest impression upon you?" inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, "when you stood i... It isn't easy for an idea to squeeze itself into a head filled with prejudice. Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words. Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason. Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses. Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and u... Having supplied them with names, omnipotence, justice, knowledge, Providence, - what are they? A good laugh is sunshine in a house. When you laugh, be sure to laugh at what people do and not at what people are. One look around us ought to show that all our arbitrary measures and bounds have been clamped on us ... No punishment of the unrighteous has ever been too severe in the eyes of the righteous. Why keep on enacting laws when we already have more than we can break. The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-re... Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand. Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others. You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea Old age may seem a long way off. But on the day it doesn't, it will be too late to do anything about... Age withers only the outside. Where ambition ends happiness begins. The best answer to answer to anger is silence. The size of a man is measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry. A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about. People who know the least always argue the most. If you look for the positive things in life; you will find them. What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir. Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes The human mind must believe in something, so why not let it believe what it does believe. He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance It is better to live richly than to die rich. On his examination paper a boy wrote, "A natural death is where you die by yourself without a doctor... Many things are worse than defeat,and compromise with evil is one of them. Desire for security keeps littleness little and threatens the great with smallness. We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd-instinct... A college education never hurt anybody who was willing to learn after he got it. Shortchange your education now and you may be short of change the rest of your life. Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them
More Jack Kerouac
Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay ma... JACK KEROUAC All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. I... JACK KEROUAC My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. JACK KEROUAC You can't teach the old maestro a new tune. JACK KEROUAC Accept loss forever. JACK KEROUAC Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken. JACK KEROUAC As you get older, you get more... genealogical. JACK KEROUAC All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land. JACK KEROUAC A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite directi... JACK KEROUAC Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end. JACK KEROUAC I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not onl... JACK KEROUAC All of life is a foreign country. JACK KEROUAC My witness is the empty sky. JACK KEROUAC I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. JACK KEROUAC I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove. JACK KEROUAC It's okay, girl, we'll make it till the sun goes down forever. And until then what you got to lose b... JACK KEROUAC I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as p... JACK KEROUAC And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We kee... JACK KEROUAC It was a rainy night. It was the myth of a rainy night. JACK KEROUAC Il pouvait à peine placer un mot tellement ça l'excitait de vivre. JACK KEROUAC Paradise!' he screamed. 'The one and only indispensable Paradise. JACK KEROUAC What's Your Road, Man? JACK KEROUAC The dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity. JACK KEROUAC I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til... JACK KEROUAC The only truth is music. JACK KEROUAC If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime. JACK KEROUAC One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. JACK KEROUAC What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see ... JACK KEROUAC Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to ... JACK KEROUAC [...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be s... JACK KEROUAC My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them. JACK KEROUAC I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference! JACK KEROUAC All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. JACK KEROUAC No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderne... JACK KEROUAC But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and shambled after as I've been doing all my... JACK KEROUAC Woe to those who spit on the beat generation, the wind will blow it back. KEROUAC JACK After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just... JACK KEROUAC This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do. JACK KEROUAC Write in recollection and amazement for yourself. JACK KEROUAC Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. JACK KEROUAC Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened t... JACK KEROUAC Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars. JACK KEROUAC The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,... JACK KEROUAC Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? JACK KEROUAC I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversati... JACK KEROUAC The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries ... JACK KEROUAC I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.' JACK KEROUAC because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere t... JACK KEROUAC One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls. JACK KEROUAC Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, th... JACK KEROUAC I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic. JACK KEROUAC It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to h... JACK KEROUAC So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry JACK KEROUAC Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun t... JACK KEROUAC I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll ru... JACK KEROUAC Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry. JACK KEROUAC I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!. JACK KEROUAC I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transm... JACK KEROUAC I was just looking at the jukebox. Just playing records. She said, You want to play with me? I sa... JACK KEROUAC The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,... JACK KEROUAC There is universal substance which is divine substance because where else can it be? JACK KEROUAC If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by sca... JACK KEROUAC You can't teach the old maestro a new tune. JACK KEROUAC Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in sub... JACK KEROUAC Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and loo... JACK KEROUAC I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was ... JACK KEROUAC Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream JACK KEROUAC The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view JACK KEROUAC A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haun... JACK KEROUAC I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest mom... JACK KEROUAC And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane peopl... JACK KEROUAC What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anyw... JACK KEROUAC My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in ne... JACK KEROUAC Besides which, she would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and... JACK KEROUAC Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road. JACK KEROUAC we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the ... JACK KEROUAC There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. JACK KEROUAC Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away... JACK KEROUAC What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see ... JACK KEROUAC Everything is all right forever and forever and forever. JACK KEROUAC Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you ... JACK KEROUAC ...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds ... JACK KEROUAC Write in recollection and amazement for yourself JACK KEROUAC Everybody was yelling 'Go! Go! Go!' (like a jam session), JACK KEROUAC Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about t... JACK KEROUAC Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to ... JACK KEROUAC Will you love me in December as you do in May? JACK KEROUAC When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw ... JACK KEROUAC A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direct... JACK KEROUAC It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false. JACK KEROUAC Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. JACK KEROUAC the road is life JACK KEROUAC [His friend, novelist Jack Kerouac, was in the audience of about 150 at the performance.] Scores of ... JACK KEROUAC Oh little Cody Pomeray if there had been some way to send a cry to you even when you were too little... JACK KEROUAC Mainly I've been back to my books and writings and being nice and quiet and lazy. As I'm writing thi... JACK KEROUAC Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look ... JACK KEROUAC Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end. JACK KEROUAC The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,... JACK KEROUAC We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing ... JACK KEROUAC What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see ... JACK KEROUAC Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces,... JACK KEROUAC I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion JACK KEROUAC I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til... JACK KEROUAC Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars. JACK KEROUAC The beat generation JACK KEROUAC “…-no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul sho... JACK KEROUAC Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and yo... JACK KEROUAC A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite directi... JACK KEROUAC The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I wa... JACK KEROUAC Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or ra... JACK KEROUAC What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take? JACK KEROUAC I was going to be left alone on my butt at the other end of the continent. But why think about that ... JACK KEROUAC ...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, ... JACK KEROUAC Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine... JACK KEROUAC Buds in the snow —the deadly fight between two birds JACK KEROUAC The other man, just as lonesome as I am In this empty universe JACK KEROUAC Hitch hiked a thousand miles and brought You wine JACK KEROUAC November the seventh The last Faint cricket JACK KEROUAC They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past... JACK KEROUAC Listen closely... the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going... JACK KEROUAC Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete relationship with his women to the poi... JACK KEROUAC ...but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in... JACK KEROUAC Here I was at the end of America - no more land - and now there was nowhere to go but back. JACK KEROUAC I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air - air you can kiss - and palms. JACK KEROUAC What is the universe but a lot of waves And a craving desire is a wave… JACK KEROUAC Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that. JACK KEROUAC And suddenly, not a soul's at the store as for other & similar & just as blank reasons, they... JACK KEROUAC ...the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fi... JACK KEROUAC Overpowered by the sadness of not knowing what there is in the world, and what I'm doing. Fee... JACK KEROUAC LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but the... JACK KEROUAC I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinki... JACK KEROUAC I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion. JACK KEROUAC As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. JACK KEROUAC Houses are full of things that gather dust JACK KEROUAC beautiful insane in the rain JACK KEROUAC My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to... JACK KEROUAC I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference. JACK KEROUAC I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody.' I typed up a segment of taped conversati... JACK KEROUAC My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always. JACK KEROUAC I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ... JACK KEROUAC Get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, home¬spun blankets and mother’s milk on your ... JACK KEROUAC Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. JACK KEROUAC I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all JACK KEROUAC The first sip [of tea] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness,... JACK KEROUAC The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and ... JACK KEROUAC Rocks are space, and space is illusion. JACK KEROUAC Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at... JACK KEROUAC Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall. JACK KEROUAC It was all completely serious, all completely hallucinated, all completely happy. JACK KEROUAC i wish the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosi... JACK KEROUAC I think it's a lovely hallucination but I love it sorta. JACK KEROUAC Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among white clouds? JACK KEROUAC I don't wanta hear all your word descriptions of words words words you made up all winter, man I wan... JACK KEROUAC The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars. JACK KEROUAC my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially free... JACK KEROUAC I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wanderin... JACK KEROUAC The silence was an intense roar. JACK KEROUAC Pretty girls make graves JACK KEROUAC Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glor... JACK KEROUAC colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds it... JACK KEROUAC The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. JACK KEROUAC Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our... JACK KEROUAC Pain or love or danger makes you real again.... JACK KEROUAC Finding Nirvana is like locating silence. JACK KEROUAC I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, th... JACK KEROUAC It all ends in tears anyway. JACK KEROUAC At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver... JACK KEROUAC At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave. JACK KEROUAC Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and loo... JACK KEROUAC It is possible for the human spirit to win after all. JACK KEROUAC As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clou... JACK KEROUAC I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til... JACK KEROUAC ...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact ... JACK KEROUAC Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your... JACK KEROUAC For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze... JACK KEROUAC Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana ... JACK KEROUAC His friends said, "Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?" and Bull said, "I like it because... JACK KEROUAC Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree. JACK KEROUAC And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was th... JACK KEROUAC I just won't sleep," I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do. JACK KEROUAC I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my f... JACK KEROUAC What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. I don't k... JACK KEROUAC We agreed to love each other madly. JACK KEROUAC My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and ask... JACK KEROUAC So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, ... JACK KEROUAC But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wa... JACK KEROUAC Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.' 'Where we going, man?' 'I don't... JACK KEROUAC Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, th... JACK KEROUAC And I dreamed of a home long ago in New England, my little kitkats trying to go a thousand miles fol... JACK KEROUAC The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I w... JACK KEROUAC ...because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or Blake or whichever it w... JACK KEROUAC ...Cody is furiously explaining to his little son Tim 'Never let the right hand know what your left ... JACK KEROUAC ...the great black bird broods outside my window in the high dark night waiting to enfold me when I ... JACK KEROUAC I went to sit in the bus station and think this over. I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’... JACK KEROUAC The smog was heavy, my eyes were weeping from it, the sun was hot, the air stank, a regular hell is ... JACK KEROUAC I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA ... JACK KEROUAC He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows st... JACK KEROUAC And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show... JACK KEROUAC Now you're going East with Sal," Galatea said, "and what do you think you're going to accomplish by ... JACK KEROUAC It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowl... JACK KEROUAC