Quotes by Jack London

“So said Hair-Face, and they killed him, because, they said, he was a wild man and wanted to go back and live in a tree. It was very strange. Whenever a man arose and wanted to go forward all those ...”

“Thirty thousand a year was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed such princely income of all its value.”

“Dark spruce frowned on either side of the frozen waterway.”

“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 ...”

“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 magni...”

“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 forget...”

“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 i...”

“Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belo...”

“It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her - mere money - compared with what she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with which he could part without a pang, while she offered him hers...”

“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 w...”

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

“The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then ...”

“Dont dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Dont write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Dont loaf and invite inspiration; light ou...”

“From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: "There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on...”

“He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.”

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration light out after it with a club. ”

“Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine linen. In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine....”

“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.”

“In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by ...”

“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.”