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Quotes About Survival

Sometimes "I'm fine" just means "I have the strength to carry on."
~ Author Unknown
Even if you've been fishing for three hours and haven't gotten anything except poison ivy and sunburn, you're still better off than the worm.
~ Author Unknown
We feel free when we escape — even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.
~ Eric Hoffer
There was nothing to do for that kind of loss — no solution to it, no medicine for it. You just coped as best you could. The ache was dull but profound, like the unanswered call of a lonely coyote.
~ Abby Geni, The Wildlands, 2018
...the question isn't whether you're happy or unhappy but alive or dead.
~ James Baldwin
When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.
~ Sophocles
Hope is that lone bloom in the desert when you can see nothing else but sand.
~ Terri Guillemets
There's a tension to being human... People are the only animals that die in childbirth... on a regular basis, I mean. It's really common for our species. Even now, with all our modern medicine... It's because of our brains... It makes you what you are, but it doesn't fit easily through a tiny birth canal.
~ Abby Geni, The Wildlands, 2018
I have seen Tasmanian devils battle over a carcass. I have seen lionesses crowding a kill, dingoes on the trail of a feral piglet, and adult croc thrashing its prey to pieces. But never, in all the animal world, have I witnessed anything to match the casual cruelty of the human being.
~ Terri Irwin, Steve & Me, 2007
Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine.
~ Jack London
He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues.
~ Jack London
We could not strike back, for we were starving; and it is the way of the world that when one man feeds another he is that man's master.
~ Jack London
Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.
~ Jack London
Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had dropped out of the trail. John Thornton and Buck looked at each other. You poor devil, said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.
~ Jack London
When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they come to the end of their own groove, they die.
~ Jack London
Ac?mak, merhamet etmek zay?fl?kt?. VahÅŸi hayatta merhamet diye bir ÅŸey yoktu. Merhamet, korku san?l?rd? ve bu yanl?? anlama, ölüm getirirdi. Ya sen öldürürsün ya da seni öldürürler, ya sen yersin ya da seni yerler; yasa buydu...
~ Jack London
Wherever a man of vigour and stature manages to grow up, he is haled forthwith into the army. A soldier, as Bernard Shaw has said, 'ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing.
~ Jack London
No matter how breathless the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the wind the later blew inevitably found him to leeward, sheltered and snug
~ Jack London
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.
~ Jack London
And, dying, he declined to die.
~ Jack London
A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train
~ Jack London
All de tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell an' den heem chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I know." From then on it was war between them. Spitz
~ Jack London
did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them.
~ Jack London
tottered through the forest, sitting down often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath. One day While Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointed with famine.  Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with him and
~ Jack London