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Jack London

Jack London Quotes

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Famous Jack London Quotes

“Do you know, I sometimes, catch myself wishing that I too were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They're wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight living is a worthless act. To labor at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me. I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you”

LifeReasonFactsPurposeEmotionBlindIntelligenceSatisfactionDelightIntellectEnvyReasoningRationality
Author:Jack London
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“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
Book:Martin Eden
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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
Book:Martin Eden
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“At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb of circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes, and desires.”

LoveLifeHealingExperience
Book:White Fang
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“Why didn’t you dare it before? he asked harshly. When I hadn’t a job? When I was starving? When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an artist, the same Martin Eden? That’s the question. I’ve been asking myself for many a day. My brain is the same old brain. And what is puzzling me is why they want me now. Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself the same olf self they did not want. They must want me for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that is not I. Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the recognition I have recieved. That recognition is not I. Then again for the money I have earned and am earnin. But money is not I. And is it for the recognition and money, that you now want me?”

LoveLifeThoughtMartin Eden
Book:Мартин Иден
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“He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life - his own kind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. One portion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.”

LifeNatureStruggle For Life
Book:White Fang
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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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“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.”

MenLifeInspirationalTryingUseActionInspiringExistenceCreativeMankindTravelWasteFunctionLondonMy TimeTime ManagementAtomsWasting TimeMagnificentShort LifeSleepyFamous InspirationalWasted TimeSuperbBurn OutWasting My TimeStiflingTime Of My LifeWasted LifeMeteorsBurned OutWasting Your TimeBurnt OutLife Being ShortProlongingWasted My TimeNot Wasting TimeWasted Time In Life
Author:Jack London
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“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 magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

MenLifeInspirationalShouldTryingCharacterUsePlanetsWasteAmbitionFunctionLondonBrilliantDustPermanentMy TimeDrySparksAtomsWasting TimeAshesMagnificentGlowingSleepyWasted TimeSuperbBlazingBurn OutRottingDon't Waste Your TimeStiflingTime Of My LifeWasted LifeMeteorsBurned OutBurnt OutProlonging
Author:Jack London
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