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"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."
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Exlpore more Reflection quotes
"Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries."
"I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from."
"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."
"A real value of our lives is in how we use our time as we journey from the womb to the tomb. A great difference between the womb and the tomb is the w and the t! Wasted time! We waste great and precious time as we journey from the womb to the tomb; in the end, we remember the w and the t in a simple statement of regret, 'had I known' ! The wasted time!"
"Think of your personal and professional life-are you attracting what you want? Are you attracting the kind of people you like? Do you feel that life is working for you or against you? How have others been treating you? Are you pleased with your results?"
"I don't dream. Come to think of it, i haven't had any dreams in a long time."
"The play of a pain is a party."
"Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything."
"They didn't speak as the sun slowly sank before them. Why was it most colorful when it was about to vanish for the night? Was it angry at being forced belong the horizon? Or was it a showman, giving a performance before retiring?Why was the most colorful part of people's bodies-the brightness of their blood-hidden beneath the skin, never to be seen unless something went wrong?"
"At Night on the High SeasAt night, when the sea cradles meAnd the pale star gleamLies down on its broad waves,Then I free myself whollyFrom all activity and all the loveAnd stand silent and breathe purely,Alone, alone cradled by the seaThat lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.Then I have to think of my friendsAnd my gaze sinks into their eyes,And I ask each one, silent and alone:"Are you still mine?Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?Do you feel from my love, my grief,Just a breath, just an echo?"And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,And smiles: NOAnd no greetings and no answers come from anywhere."
Explore more quotes by Jack Kerouac
"He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying 'Am,' and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking."
"Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much."
"Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever."
"Japhy was considered an eccentric around the campus, which is the usual thing for campuses and college people to think whenever a real man appears on the scene - colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization."
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