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Martin Eden

Book by Jack London · 12 quotes · Alienation, Books, Life

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Martin Eden Quotes

“He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return home. On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious need for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no new home.”

LifeDisappointmentAlienation
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“He thanked God that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence. But he knew life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of the slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on it to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be anything but fair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah, that was the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud- dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment-”

LifeMoralsSaints
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“What under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgoisie? Leave them alone. pick some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, and they will love you just as reaidly as any pusillanimous product of bourgois-sheltered life." "Pusillanimous?" Martin protested. 'Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will love you, Martin, but they will love their little moralities more. What you want is the magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing butterflies of life and not the little gary months".”

ChoicesIndependenceLiving Life To The Fullest
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“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 belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There are the stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are rotting. Smell them, damn you, smell them. And yet you dare to open the books, to listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful paintings, to speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your own kind thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million miles beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you? and what are you? damn you! And are you going to make good?”

LoveMusicPaintingSmell
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“But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she protested. "No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike.”

CriticsJudgementPersonal Expression
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“Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun. He would stand up, with open eyes, and he would struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes unblinded and tongue untied, he could share with her his visioned wealth. Other men had discovered the trick of expression, of making words obedient servitors, and making combinations of words mean more than the sum of their separate meanings. He was stirred profoundly by the passing glimpse at the secret, and he was again caught up in the vision of sunlit spaces and starry voids - until it came to him taht it was very quiet, and he saw Ruth regarding him with an amused expression and a smile in her eyes.”

WritingWriting QuotesWriting CraftWriting InspirationWriting Inspirational
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“Editörlerin yüzde doksan dokuzunun başta gelen özelliği, başarısızlıkları. Yazar olmayı başaramamışlar. Sakın masabaşı işinin sıkıcılığını, satışların ve işletme müdürünün kölesi olmayı yazarlıktan daha çok istediklerini zannetme. Yazmaya çalışmış ve becerememişler. İşte lanetli paradoks da tam burada. Edebiyatta başarıya açılan her kapının önünde bekçi köpeği olarak onlar, yani edebiyatta başarıya ulaşamamışlar durur. Editörlerin, editör yardımcılarının ve dergilere, yayınevlerine dosya değerlendirmesi yapan danışmanların hepsi, yazar olmaya çalışmış ama bunu başaramamış kişilerden oluşuyor. Özgünlük ve deha konusunda yargı makamında oturup, matbaaya neyin gidip neyi gitmeyeceğine karar verenler, şu dünyada bu işi yapması gereken son kişiler, yani özgün bir yanlarının olmadığı kanıtlanmış, ilahi kıvılcımın yanlarına bile uğramadığı belli olmuş adamlar.”

YazarMartin EdenDergiEditör
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