Quotes from Robert W. Service

I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that's not too new.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

Some praise the Lord for Light, The living spark; I thank God for the Night The healing dark.

Our breath is brief, and being so Let's make our heaven here below, And lavish kindness as we go.

Carry on! Carry on! Fight the good fight and true; Believe in you mission, greet life with a cheer.

His life, though none too long, Was never dull: Of woman, wine and song Bill had his full.

The Wanderlust has got me... by the belly-aching fire

A promise made is a debt unpaid

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I know. There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling...let us go

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting So much as just finding the gold. It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

I have no doubt at all the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my literary sins -- The other kind don't matter.

No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success; If he thinks he is a winner, then he is.

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting So much as just finding the gold. It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?- Then you've a hunch was the music meant...hunger and night and the stars.

There's a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back—and I will.

A half-dead thing in a stark dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold.

Ah! the clock is always slow; it is later than you think.

No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success If he thinks he is a winner, then he is.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

The only society I like is rough and tough, and the tougher the better. There's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people.

I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.