Jack London Quotes

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

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

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

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.

The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.

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.

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

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

There's only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the disappoint­ment s.

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

I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.

To be able to forget means sanity.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

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

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

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

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

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.

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

Socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men can get food to eat.

Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.

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

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

Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousness so wide apart that they can never be united.

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

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

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

Everything is good . . . as long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses they run in span.

I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.

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

I would rather be ashes than dust.

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

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

Somehow, the love of the islands, like the love of a woman, just happens. One cannot determine in advance to love a particular woman, nor can one so determine to love Hawaii.

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.

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

I am first of all a white man, and only then a socialist.

And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.

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

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!

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

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