Quotes from Jack London

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

You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly

The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.

The greatest of the arts is the conquering of men.

The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise.

A man with a club is a law-maker.

Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.

It is good that man should accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh, and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion.

Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.

The man, with his brain, can pierce the intoxicating mirage of things and contemplate a frozen universe in the most perfect indifference to him and his dreams.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

Then one can't make a living out of poetry? Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.

Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.

I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

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 forgetfulness that one is alive.

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.

Strength is an empty shell.

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!