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Jack London

Jack London Quotes

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Famous Jack London Quotes

“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!”

ThinkingWellsI CanHomeThreeSportsCan DoHoursWonderStreetsTomorrowTwentiesLaysTrackCrowdsMilesBridgesAvoidingBikeWorth LivingCyclingRailroadsI Can Do ItCollisionLife Worth LivingRailroad Tracks
Author:Jack London
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“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”

MenLongHas BeensLyingNightHousePayFireColdCostSlaveGlassesWoodsWarmAwakeCriedBlanketPay The PriceShiverTrue YouCabinsCold Night
Book:Jack London: The Complete Novels [Classics Authors Vol: 6] (Black Horse Classics)
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“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.”

KnowsWorldDoeMadeFightingCan DoRealizingExistenceGreaterBloodAchieveSummit
Book:The unabridged Jack London
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“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.”

EarthTurnsFeltWonderFireHeardForestsBeatenCompelledThrillingPlunge
Book:Call of the Wild
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“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.”

ShouldHeartReasonWhiteCommonLibertyDogMastersDignityPropertyGood TimesNo ReasonPermitWarningHis LoveFangs
Book:White Fang
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“Bog-lights, vapors of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies ... this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves. Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels — your Schopenhauers, your Strindbergs, your Tolstois and Nietzsches. Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget.”

BookLightStuffForgetFantasyEmptyGlassesMysticismShelvesPsychicsVeilsTissuesHallucinationsGnosticismVaporBogsSubjectivism
Author:Jack London
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“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.”

MenWorldMightChanceViolenceFashionEatingChaosEndlessConfusionDisorderAppetiteHuntingMultitudesBlindnessPursuedSlaughterGluttonyHuntedCubs
Book:White Fang
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“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.”

HappensHurtAnimalConsciousEssenceInstinctTerrorPossessedCatastropheUnthinkable
Book:The Call of the Wild and White Fang
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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.”

IfsKnowsMenWorldHas BeensValuesCoursesBornLossBrainAcceptingTreasurePlentyFallenDo You KnowHoneyDiamondFavourDeckPrecious ThingsRubiesCombs
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)
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“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.”

WorldFirstsLongHas BeensMightSongStarsExistenceHalfLandKeysSnowMinorsFrozenMight Have BeenDefianceNumbFrostOverheadPleadingWailingAuroraOld SongHuskies
Book:Five Classic Animal Adventures: The Jungle Book, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, The Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows, and Black Beauty
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“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.”

MenFactsAbleCertainUniverseImaginationTroubleFieldsColdCreaturesLimitsDegreesOddImmortalityUncomfortableHeatFiftySignificanceZeroImpressedEightyTemperatureFrostFrailtyHeat And Cold
Book:To Build a Fire
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“[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.”

MenWorldYearsMeanChildrenBodyHandsRaceBrainMillionsTakenWifeGroupsModernAmountCapacityYears AgoToolsProductionsBreadSecureProductiveWealthySurvivedCavesNew YorkersMultiplying
Author:Jack London
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