Quotes from Jack London

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.

There's only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the disappoint­ment s.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

For the pride of trace and trail was his, and sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work.

Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world.

Thirty thousand a year was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed such princely income of all its value.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

Everything is good . . . as long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses they run in span.

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die…. Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

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

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.

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.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.

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.