"The mission of the contemplative in this world of massive conflict and collective unreason is to seek the true way of unity and peace, without succumbing to the illusion of withdrawing into a realm of abstraction from which unpleasant realities are simply excluded by the force of will.  In facing the world with a totally different viewpoint, the contemplative maintains alive in the world the presence of a spiritual and intelligent consciousness which is the root of true peace and true unity…"
(Thomas Merton)

"The beauty of things must be that they end."
(Jack Kerouac)

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"This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is."
(Jack Kerouac)

"As early pioneers in the knowing, when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing."
(Jack Kerouac)

"No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction -- toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I
not attain highest perfect enlightenment."
(Gary Snyder)

"I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas."
(Charles Bukowski)