Quotes About Survival

One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch. Rifle broke. She said this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.

But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.

The master rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.

Estaban vivos a medias, o quizá menos.

Había que dominar o ser dominado; y la piedad era una señal de debilidad. En la vida primitiva no existía. Se confundía piedad con temor y ello acarreaba la muerte. Matar o morir, comer o ser comido: tal era la ley; y Buck obedecía a aquel mandato que surgía de las profundidades del tiempo.

I oto zew doszedÅ' Bucka, nieomylny, zdobyty, prawdziwy. SiadÅ' wiÄ™c równie? i równie? zawyÅ'.

All life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the world.

If looks could kill I should have been a dead man that day.  Openly they spat at sight of me, and, everywhere arose snarls and cries.

Sitka Charley started. There had been more than one shot, yet there was but one other rifle in the party. He gave a fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly, smiled viciously at the wisdom of the trail, and hurried on to meet the Men of the Yukon.

ancient, grizzled, wild-eyed, emaciated by fever, dragged his weary frame up the veranda steps and collapsed in a steamer-chair.  Whisky and soda kept him going while he made report and turned in his accounts.

Though alone, he was not lost. 

Sabía que era inútil interponerse entre un idiota y su locura; mientras que dos o tres idiotas menos no se echarían de menos en el mundo.

a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.

hard as he strove with his body, he strove equally hard with his mind, trying to think that Bill had not deserted him, that Bill would surely wait for him at the cache.  He was compelled to think this thought, or else there would not be any use to strive, and he would have lain down and died. 

They ran through the night. And the next day found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred.

One broken hind leg, he went on. Three broken ribs, one at least of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn't a chance in ten thousand.

He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it.

Al desierto no suele gustarle el movimiento. Toma como una ofensa la vida, porque vida es movimiento, y él tiende siempre a destruirlo.

He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life.

Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips that writhed and snarled.

In dim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild.

The hunger pangs were sharp.  They gnawed and gnawed until he could not keep his mind steady on the course he must pursue to gain the land of little sticks.