Man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a will-of-the-wisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland.

Jack London

Categorized in : Men Self Flow

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

men night lying

He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survived the hostile environment in which he found himself.

intelligent dog feet

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.

fear-of-the-unknown abiding appearance

There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants.... The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken.

stupid men fall

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame. by Jack London

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.

fury torment silent

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

misunderstood mercy made

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.

saws spirit world

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murm... by Jack London

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

silence winter spring

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.

afar life facts

. . . and God knows we are sensitive to the suffering that has sometimes broken loose to come billowing forth from your appendages like the pungent vapors of whales - often it appears that in this life of experience and accommodation we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. But Sissy . . . hold on!

whales justice life

I am a hopeless materialist. I see the soul as nothing else than the sim of activities of the organism plus personal habits - plus inherited habits, memories, experiences, of the organism. I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.

soul memories believe

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.

predator killers strong

I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.

atheism believe religion

Everything is good . . . as long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses they run in span.

horse running long

But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous jud... by Jack London

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

judgment mankind taste

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.

pain hate strong

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class. by Jack London

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

fake-people mother class

So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of... by Jack London

So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.

ends play way

Pray do not interrupt me," he wrote. "I am smiling. by Jack London

Pray do not interrupt me," he wrote. "I am smiling.

praying

Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles... by Jack London

Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

sarcastic principles heart