Our ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first of many short cuts. To crack a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which fathered the tool, and between the cracking of a marrow-bone and the riding down town in an automobile lies only a difference of degree.

Jack London

Categorized in : Lying Cutting Rocks

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

ambition inspirational life

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

Jack London

motivational inspirational life

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

Jack London

tattoo men past

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

Jack London

witty inspirational funny

I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.

Jack London

think-of-me world thinking

The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.

Jack London

wreckage stories beautiful

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

inspiring inspirational life

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

Jack London

easier courses

Love cannot in its very nature be peaceful or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting love just as I can grant a lasting unsatisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be coupled with possession, for love is pain and desire and possession is easement and fulfilment.

Jack London

peaceful pain love-is

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

generosity dog giving

There's only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the disappointment s.

Jack London

disappoint hard-work way

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.

Jack London

stars keys song

Socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men can get food to eat.

Jack London

lasts political men

Bog-lights, vapors of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies ... this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves. Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels — your Schopenhauers, your Strindbergs, your Tolstois and Nietzsches. Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget.

Jack London

glasses light book

The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

Jack London

language strong feelings

Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.

Jack London

growth

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

Jack London

lurking stills

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

Jack London

possession pain desire

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

Jack London

mandates depth law

Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.

Jack London

limitation mind