The Best Quotes Of The Beat Generation

A love for poetry is a love for living through multiple lifetimes apart from your own. Some of my favorite poets are the minds who founded the Beat Generation, a movement formed by a group of college students at Columbia University in the 1950s who explored their emotions and reflected on their experiences of life as artists in New York City. The following are a few of my personal favorite quotes from their writings.

1. The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction, the weight, the weight we carry is love. — Allen Ginsberg

2. Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. — William S. Burroughs

3. If I had a soul I sold it for pretty words; If I had a body I used it up spurting my essence. — Allen Ginsberg

4. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. — Jack Kerouac

5. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac

6. The spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith — and the art! to persist. — William Carlos Williams

7. I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. — Jack Kerouac

8. The circle is complete. I am living in Eternity. The ways of this world are the ways of Heaven. ― Allen Ginsberg

9. Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars. — Jack Kerouac

10. Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. — Allen Ginsberg

The beauty of poetry and emotive writing in general is that it doesn't have to pertain to only person or only one situation. It's meant to be ambiguous. It's meant to make you think of memories or emotions that are dear to you and help you make sense of them. Poetry is important to me not only because it is beautiful but also because it can highlight things that are not-so-beautiful. Essentially, that is the power of art: being unapologetic about showcasing who you truly are.