Jack London famous quotes

Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.
-- Jack London

#Tattoo #Past #Men

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
-- Jack London

#Inspirational #Life #Ambition

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
-- Jack London

#Funny #Witty #Life Changing

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
-- Jack London

#Sleep #Atoms #Meteors

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Generosity #Giving

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
-- Jack London

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.
-- Jack London

#Strong #Predator #Killers

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
-- Jack London

#Thinking #Law #Meat

The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.
-- Jack London

#Zero #Men #Imagination

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.
-- Jack London

#Stills

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
-- Jack London

#Song #Heart #Years

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!...Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it...and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!
-- Jack London

#Home #Thinking #Bridges

Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.
-- Jack London

#Fire #Forests #Earth

To have a full stomach, to daze lazily in the sunshine--such things were remuneration in full for his adors and toils, while his ardors and toils were in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself.
-- Jack London

#Sunshine #Self #Expression

The function of man is to live, not to exist.
-- Jack London

#Men #Function

To be able to forget means sanity.
-- Jack London

#Mean #Able #Forget

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.
-- Jack London

#War #Thinking #Artist

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.
-- Jack London

#Song #Life Is #Life Is So Short

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.
-- Jack London

#Cash #Fame

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
-- Jack London

#Alive #Paradox #Mark

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
-- Jack London

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Laughter #Sadness

He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread.
-- Jack London

#Wall #Light #Way

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.
-- Jack London

#Memories #Men #Animal

It was the worst hurt he had ever known.
-- Jack London

#Hurt #Worst

White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.
-- Jack London

#Strong #Law #White

His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.
-- Jack London

#Abiding #Fear Of The Unknown #Appearance

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave.
-- Jack London

#Mother #Law #Caves

They were firemakers! They were gods! [humans]
-- Jack London

#Humans

Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny.
-- Jack London

#Mother #Memories #Father

She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Men #Feet

It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. (Ch.1)
-- Jack London

#Laughing #Effort #Savages

On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over, - a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement.
-- Jack London

#Moving #Struggle #Men

Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.
-- Jack London

#Fire #Return #Body

The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.
-- Jack London

#Struggle #Bucks #Firsts

A man with a club [bat] is a law-maker, a man to be obeyed, but not necessarily conciliated.
-- Jack London

#Men #Law #Bats

But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind
-- Jack London

#Taste #Judgment #Mankind

The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign; who must take numerous glasses in order to get the ‘kick’.
-- Jack London

#Couple #Men #Glasses

But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Heart #White

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
-- Jack London

#Song #Stars #Land

more you drink more you want
-- Jack London

#Want #Drink

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.
-- Jack London

#Silent #Fury #Torment

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomized life as a voracious appetite, and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.
-- Jack London

#Fashion #Men #Hunting

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?
-- Jack London

#Time #Gears #World

Bog-lights, vapors of mysticism, psychic Gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations—this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves. Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget.
-- Jack London

#Book #Psychics #Glasses

Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them.
-- Jack London

#Men #Valuation

My mistake was in ever opening the books.
-- Jack London

#Mistake #Book #My Mistakes

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.
-- Jack London

#Life #Stars #Perfect

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.
-- Jack London

#Spring #Winter #Silence

[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers] A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times — you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you. 
-- Jack London

#Children #Taken #Mean

Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.
-- Jack London

#Companion

And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.
-- Jack London

#Instant

Pray do not interrupt me," he wrote. "I am smiling.
-- Jack London

#Praying

He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.
-- Jack London

#Immoral

So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.
-- Jack London

#Play #Way #Ends

This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.
-- Jack London

#Expression #Surrender #Masters

Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.
-- Jack London

#Growth

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.
-- Jack London

#Memories #San Francisco #Gone

...in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness -- faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain.
-- Jack London

#Gambling #Weakness #Damnation

You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!" he cried. "You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor." He signaled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. "But I have lived. And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept warm
-- Jack London

#Lying #Night #Men

But, – and there it is, – we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality.
-- Jack London

#Dream #Moving #Want

...men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Strong #Men

His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him.
-- Jack London

#Night #Forgotten #Bondage

He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survived the hostile environment in which he found himself.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Intelligent #Feet

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take care of himself in a mass-fight against him; and how, on a single dog, to inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Fighting #Two

But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
-- Jack London

#Summer #Running #Reading

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
-- Jack London

#Womb #Deeper

For the pride of trace and trail was his, and sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Pride #Sick

He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.
-- Jack London

#Pain #Distance #Impact

Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.
-- Jack London

#Passionate #Firsts #Genuine

He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
-- Jack London

#Dog #Fighting #Law

The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering. He still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.
-- Jack London

#Men #Hands #Hair

As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.
-- Jack London

#Hurt #Suffering #Weakness

The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living., though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made.... He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
-- Jack London

#Fighting #Blood #World

But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.
-- Jack London

#Adventure #Men #Land

No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language.
-- Jack London

#Strong #Pain #Hate

You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly
-- Jack London

#Men #Two #Sunrise

He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetness of spirit did not exist.
-- Jack London

#World #Saws #Spirit

And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.
-- Jack London

#Taken #Afraid Of Life #Ashamed

It's better to stand by someone's side than by yourself
-- Jack London

#Sides

There is such a thing as anesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne.
-- Jack London

#Pain #Anesthesia #Exquisite

I'll have you know I do the swearing on this ship. If I need your assitance I'll call you." Capt. Wolf Larsen
-- Jack London

#Needs #Ships #Swearing

I was jealous; therefore I loved.
-- Jack London

#Jealous

They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.
-- Jack London

#Bags #Half #Sparks

He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
-- Jack London

#Hurt #Animal #Essence

He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
-- Jack London

#Doe #Achieve #Existence

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.
-- Jack London

#Stupid #Intelligent #Men

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.
-- Jack London

#Loss #Men #Brain