|
a9510af
|
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.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
e9c2e10
|
The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
4c35f2b
|
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.
|
|
nature
life
|
Jack London |
|
c97939f
|
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.
|
|
meteor
|
Jack London |
|
123bb6f
|
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. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading ..
|
|
life
ecstasy
|
Jack London |
|
3661bdc
|
To be able to forget means sanity.
|
|
sanity
forgetting
|
Jack London |
|
baad7a7
|
Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
c0fe4f7
|
But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
b7b976e
|
But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
744d24b
|
As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.
|
|
suffering
weak
weakness
|
Jack London |
|
0e62ce7
|
He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.
|
|
torment
tame
|
Jack London |
|
0516841
|
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.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
092d401
|
He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. 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. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for dea..
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
c62e200
|
Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
a2b4926
|
Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
8d904f1
|
White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
8664327
|
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 survive.
|
|
survival-of-the-fittest
|
Jack London |
|
e82c577
|
Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
8fe3973
|
Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit ..
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
f061331
|
No, sir. Go to hell sir. It's the best I can do for you sir.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
14f6ceb
|
A man with a club [bat] is a law-maker, a man to be obeyed, but not necessarily conciliated.
|
|
clubs
|
Jack London |
|
82362f6
|
This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
66f9f6a
|
His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
3c5dfb5
|
He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
|
|
time
|
Jack London |
|
2806270
|
He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
e427afd
|
He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
6b1b580
|
The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
99c3bbb
|
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
f579416
|
The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
db55475
|
But, - and there it is, - we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
4cbdc2d
|
He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetness of spirit did not exist.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
dceaf41
|
But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
0dc2fc1
|
He must master or be mastered; while to show mecy was a weakness. 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.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
95bfd8b
|
Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There ..
|
|
music
smell
painting
|
Jack London |
|
063715d
|
My mistake was in ever opening the books.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
fac520e
|
The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering. He still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
6b1be0d
|
Don't dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it. Set yourself a "stint," [London wrote 1,000 words nearly every day of his adult life] and see that you do that "stint" each day;..
|
|
writing
|
Jack London |
|
3faf9b9
|
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
83bf065
|
So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
f05357d
|
They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
550ddf9
|
No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
9b796b1
|
He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.
|
|
|
Jack London |
|
79f5ce5
|
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
|
|
wolves
wild
|
Jack London |
|
e72531b
|
There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food;
|
|
|
Jack London |