Jack London Quotes - Page 5

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I was five years old the first time I got drunk.

Jack London

Years, Drunk, Firsts

Jack London (2016). “John Barleycorn”, p.11, Xist Publishing

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I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

Jack London

Beauty, Writing, Add

Jack London (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.10, Jack London

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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

Jack London (2004). “The Sea-Wolf and Selected Stories: 100th Anniversary Edition”, p.21, Penguin

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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

Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.20, Jack London

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When, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark.

Jack London

Stars, Dark, Night

Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.17, Wordsworth Editions

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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

Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.553, Delphi Classics

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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, Fire

Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.49, Jack London

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But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury added.

Jack London

Iron, Mad, Long

Jack London (2016). “John Barleycorn”, p.28, Xist Publishing

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Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world.

Jack London

Art, Flower, Animal

Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.3773, Delphi Classics

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And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.

Jack London

Dog, Animal, Long

Jack London (2011). “Call of The Wild, White Fang”, p.51, Bantam Classics

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

Jack London

Praying

Jack London (2014). “Jack London The Dover Reader”, p.403, Courier Corporation

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I early learned that there were two natures in me. This caused me a great deal of trouble, till I worked out a philosophy of life and struck a compromise between the flesh and the spirit. Too great an ascendancy of either was to be abnormal, and since normality is almost a fetish of mine, I finally succeeded in balancing both natures. Ordinarily they are at equilibrium; yet as frequently as one is permitted to run rampant, so is the other. I have small regard for an utter brute or for an utter saint.

Jack London

Running, Philosophy, Two

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Man is man because he chanced to develop intelligence instead of instinct; otherwise he would to this day have remained among the anthropoid apes. He has turned away from nature, become unnatural, as it were, disliked the earth upon which he found himself, and changed the face of it somewhat to his liking.

Jack London

Men, Earth, Faces

Jack London (2014). “The Kempton-Wase Letters”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise.

Jack London

Hate, Loneliness, Men

Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.570, Delphi Classics

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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, Book

Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.58, Wordsworth Editions

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Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

Jack London

Sarcastic, Heart, Principles

"Workers have been banned from calling out 'scab'. Where are the freedom senators?" by Jeff Sparrow, www.theguardian.com. September 04, 2016.

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The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment until it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about gruesome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, moving along a well-oiled groove to the family vault, where the hinges are kept from rusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away.

Jack London

Rain, Moving, Air

Jack London (2015). “Love of life and Other Stories by Jack London”, p.68, Editora Dracaena

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Man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a will-of-the-wisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland.

Jack London

Men, Self, Flow

Jack London (2016). “Jack London Six Pack”, p.298, Lulu.com

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The man, with his brain, can pierce the intoxicating mirage of things and contemplate a frozen universe in the most perfect indifference to him and his dreams.

Jack London

Dream, Men, Perfect

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There is such a thing as anaesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne.

Jack London

Pain, Anesthesia, Exquisite

"The Star Rover".

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It is good that man should accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh, and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion.

Jack London

Lying, Passion, Men

Jack London (2016). “Jack London Six Pack”, p.292, Lulu.com

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

Jack London

Gambling, Weakness, Damnation

Jack London (2015). “Jack London The Dover Reader”, p.5, Courier Corporation

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Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.

Jack London

Men, Alcohol, Brain

Jack London (1903). “Novels and Social Writings”, p.952, Library of America

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He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.

Jack London

Immoral

Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.572, Delphi Classics

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As for the primitive, I hark back to it because we are still very primitive. How many thousands of years of culture, think you, have rubbed and polished at our raw edges? One probably; at the best, no more than two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla.

Jack London

Tattoo, Thinking, Blood

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Born: January 12, 1876
Died: November 22, 1916
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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