The Dharma Bums Quotes

Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.”

“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.”

“I felt free and therefore I was free.”

“Pretty girls make graves.”

“It all ends in tears anyway.”

“Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”

“Pain or love or danger makes you real again...”

“Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”

“Rocks are space, and space is illusion.”

“The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.”

“My karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially wisdom.”

“Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can’t fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.”

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

“I don’t wanta hear all your word descriptions of words words words you made up all winter, man I wanta be enlightened by actions.”

“It was all completely serious, all completely hallucinated, all completely happy.”

“Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?”

“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, “God, I love you” and looked to the sky and really meant it. “I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.” To the children and the innocent it’s all the same.”

“The silence was an intense roar.”

“The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars.”