Quotes by 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.””

“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.””

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.””

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.””

“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 the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.””

“Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.””

“To be able to forget means sanity.””

“Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel. ””

“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.””

“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.””

“But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind””

“He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.””

“As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.””