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Jack London

Jack London Quotes

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Famous Jack London Quotes

“The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smoulders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive. I am filled with dreams and mysteries. I am all sun and air and sparkle. I am vitalized, organic.”

DreamSunAliveAirMysterySeaSkyMountainRedFilledGladStealingHillsFlamesScoreAutumnAfternoonRollingFogGrapesSparkleWispsDrowsyI Am AliveRolling HillsAfternoon Sun
Book:John Barleycorn
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“I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.”

LifeSpiritualRomanceNightWonderSawsAdventureSweetHolyBurningRememberedParadiseSunshineEthicalDay And NightUnselfishBlazingHoly Grail
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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“The life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.”

LifeLooksMatterLastsFatherOpportunityNationsBitsBornMillionsPossibilityFishesEggsContinentsLimitlessUnbornSpendthrift
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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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.”

WorldLongMomentsPayWeekLowsWeaknessMadInstantIronBalancedMagnificentSavagesSchedulesFeatsCorrespondingLong DaySlimeUsury
Book:John Barleycorn
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“There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants.... The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken.”

KnowsMenTwoBodyFallImaginationWalksBrainVisionStupidHe ManTypeBlueLegsSpreadWideEcstasyMiceElephantsNumbDrinkersGuttersExtremityMaggots
Author:Jack London
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“Mental or spiritual health, which is rationality, makes for progress, and the future demands greater and greater mental or spiritual health, greater and greater rationality. The brain must dominate and direct both the individual and society in the time to come, not the belly and the heart.”

HeartSpiritualIndividualBrainGreaterProgressDemandDirectRationalityBellySpiritual HealthIndividuals And Society
Book:The Kempton-Wase Letters
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“It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, and this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they come to the end of their own groove, they die.”

WellsDoeMadeEndsMatterHappensLife IsDiesIndividualSimpleStrangeCivilizationObviousExpectedGravesTendenciesUnexpectedIncapableStaticImportsGrooveAdjustingIndividual LifePropulsion
Book:Jack London: The Complete Novels [Classics Authors Vol: 6] (Black Horse Classics)
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“Life creeps slowly upward.... When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILIZATION!”

WorldMayMadeSaidFoundEnemyPracticeRevolutionCivilizationForgottenWoodsBranchesDestinedRivalsInventorCreepsCornerstonesArtificeArtificialityHistory Of Life
Book:The Kempton-Wase Letters
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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.”

HumansWellsMadeMovingLawEnvironmentAirEffectsColdCivilizationRainMachinesDustInevitableWetStalkingFrostGrooveHingesRegularityPageantVaultsForeseen
Book:Love of life and Other Stories by Jack London
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“Stupid women, and all are stupid, think the first winning of the man the final victory. Then they settle down and grow fat, and stale, and dead, and heartbroken. Alas, they are so stupid. But you, little infant-woman with your first victory, you must make your love-life an unending chain of victories. Each day you must win your man again. And when you have won the last victory, when you can find no more to win, then ends love. Finis is written, and your man wanders in strange gardens.”

ThinkingMenFirstsLittlesEndsLastsWinningGrowsWrittenStupidStrangeHe ManVictoryGardenDown AndFinalsFatsWanderChainsSettlingEach DayLove LifeAlasInfantHeartbrokenStaleSettling DownUnending
Book:The Valley of the Moon: Classic American Literature
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“Our ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first of many short cuts. To crack a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which fathered the tool, and between the cracking of a marrow-bone and the riding down town in an automobile lies only a difference of degree.”

FirstsLyingDifferencesCuttingRocksDegreesToolsTownsBonesCracksAncestorRidingAutomobileApesMarrowShort Cuts
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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“As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I'll tell you. It is because socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man on horseback. The slaves won't stand for it. They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before he gets astride. You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice mess, I'll allow. But it's been a-brewing and swallow it you must.”

MenWholeWould BePastWonderNiceMoralitySlaveEndureSocialismMessInevitableGet AwayDragSocialistIrrationalRottenBrewingHorsebackEquestrian
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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“Love cannot in its very nature be peaceful or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting love just as I can grant a lasting unsatisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be coupled with possession, for love is pain and desire and possession is easement and fulfilment.”

I CanPainDesireLove IsPossessionPeacefulLastingGrantsRestlessnessFulfilmentLasting LoveLove Is Pain
Book:The Complete Novels of Jack London – 22 Adventure Classics in One Volume (Illustrated): The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, White Fang, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, Burning Daylight, The Scarlet Plague, A Son of the Sun, The Valley of the Moon, The Star Rover, Hearts of Three…
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“The marriage tie becomes possessed of a history and takes to itself traditions. This history and these traditions form a great fund, to which changing conditions and growing imagination constantly add. And the traditions, more especially, bear heavily upon the individual, overmastering his natural expression of the love instinct and forcing him to an artificial expression of that love instinct. He loves, not as his savage forbears loved, but as his group loves.”

FormIndividualImaginationNaturalGrowingGroupsConditionsExpressionBearsTraditionAddInstinctTiesFundArtificialPossessedSavages
Book:The Complete Novels of Jack London – 22 Adventure Classics in One Volume (Illustrated): The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, White Fang, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, Burning Daylight, The Scarlet Plague, A Son of the Sun, The Valley of the Moon, The Star Rover, Hearts of Three…
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“The great task demanded of man is reproduction. He is urged by passion to perform this task. Passion, working through the imagination, produces love. Passion is the impelling factor, imagination the disturbing factor; and the disturbance of passion by imagination produces love.”

MenPassionImaginationProduceTasksFactorsDisturbingReproductionDisturbanceLove Passion
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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