"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."
— Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

"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."
— Jack London

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."
— Jack London

"And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine."
— Jack London

"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

"Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past."
— Jack London

"I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather my spark 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 flow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
— Jack London

"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 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 (The Call of the Wild)

"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 (The Call of the Wild)

"Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!...Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it...and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!"
— Jack London

"A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild."
— Jack London

"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."
— Jack London

"A man with a club [bat] is a law-maker, a man to be obeyed, but not necessarily conciliated."
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exsist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
— Jack London

"You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly"
— Jack London (The Sea Wolf)

"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 of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left." "
— Jack London (The Sea Wolf)

"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 n a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. "
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"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 (The Sea Wolf)

"Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny."
— Jack London (White Fang)

"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 (White Fang)

""Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time." "
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"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 (The Call of the Wild)

""You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." "
— Jack London

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

"He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire.
'An' I wisht this cold snap'd break,' he went on. 'It's been fifty below for two weeks now. An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry. I don't like the looks of it. I don't feel right, somehow. An' while I'm wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playin' cribbage- that's what I wisht.'
"
— Jack London (White Fang)

"Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity."
— Jack London (John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs)

"I'd rather be ashes than dust. I'd rather my flame go out in a burning spark than to be stifled with dry rot. I'd rather be a splendid meteor blazing across the sky with every atom in me a magnificent glow, than be a sleepy and permanent planet. Life is to be lived, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I will use my time."
— Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

"But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. "
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain. "
— Jack London (Mutiny of the Elsinore)

"The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence."
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

""You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.""
— Jack London

"“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.”"
— Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

"It was what should have been a bright summer day, but the smoke
from the burning world filled the sky, through which the sun shone
murkily, a dull and lifeless orb, blood-red and ominous."
— Jack London (The Scarlet Plague)

"...in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness -- faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. "
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"I would rather be ashes then dust; i would rather that my my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze then it should be stifled by dry-rot; i would rather be in a superb metor, every atom of me in a magnificient glow than in a sleepy and permanent planet; 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"
— Jack London

""I will not waste my days in trying to prolong them""
— Jack London

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
"
— Jack London

"San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories. "
— Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
"
— Jack London

"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

""He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do." - Jack London in 'White Fang'.
"
— Jack London

""You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!" he cried. "You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor." He signaled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. "But I have lived. And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept warm""
— Jack London (To Build a Fire and Other Stories)

"She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men."
— Jack London (White Fang)

"So said Hair-Face, and they killed him, because, they said, he was a wild man and wanted to go back and live in a tree. It was very strange. Whenever a man arose and wanted to go forward all those that stood still said he went backward and should be killed. And the poor people helped stone him, and were fools. We were all fools, except those who were fat and did no work. The fools were called wise, and the wise were stoned. Men who worked did not get enough to eat, and the men who did not work ate too much."
— Jack London (To Build a Fire and Other Stories)

"the toil of trace and trail"
— Jack London

"He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread."
— Jack London (White Fang)