Jack London Best Quotes

No, sir. Go to hell sir. It's the best I can do for you sir.

He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any by the molding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast - a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can best be characterized as carnivorous.

Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form." [Letter to Max E. Feckler, Oct. 26, 1914]

Hers was that common insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they.

We fight best, and die best, and live best, for what we love.

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.

But at the best, it is a dull, animal happiness, the content of the full belly. The dominant note of their lives is materialistic. They are stupid and heavy, without imagination. The Abyss seems to exude a stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which wraps about them and deadens them. Religion passes them by. The Unseen holds for them neither terror nor delight. They are unaware of the Unseen; and the full belly and the evening pipe, with their regular “arf an’ arf,” is all they demand, or dream of demanding, from existence.

How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

Nature had been busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the purpose of loving. She had spent ten thousand centuries — ay, a hundred thousand and a million centuries — upon the task, and he was the best she could do.

Hers was that common insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they. It was the same insularity of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was not born a woman, and sent the modern missionary god-substituting to the ends of the earth; and it made Ruth desire to shape this man from other crannies of life into the likeness of the men who lived in her particular cranny of life.

there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!

Morality is only evidence of low blood pressure.

Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze.

Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

he was outcast from life's feast.

his first masterpiece, Boule de Suif,

Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?" "No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply.

Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!

And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our work—just a word, or caress, or flash of love-light; and our moments were sweeter for being stolen. For we lived on the heights, where the air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity, and where sordidness and selfishness never entered. We loved love, and our love was never smirched by anything less than the best. And this out of all remains: I did not fail.

Imperial is like Robert Caro’s The Power Broker with the attitude of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, if Robert Caro had been raised in an abandoned grain silo by a band of feral raccoons, and if Mike Davis were the communications director of a heavily armed libertarian survivalist cult, and if the two of them had somehow managed to stitch John McPhee’s cortex onto the brain of a Gila monster, which they then sent to the Mexican border to conduct ten years of immersive research, and also if they wrote the entire manuscript on dried banana leaves with a toucan beak dipped in hobo blood, and then the book was line-edited during a 36-hour peyote séance by the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis, with 200 pages of endnotes faxed over by Henry David Thoreau’s great-great-great-great grandson from a concrete bunker under a toxic pond behind a maquiladora, and if at the last minute Herman Melville threw up all over the manuscript, rendering it illegible, so it had to be re-created from memory by a community-theater actor doing his best impression of Jack Kerouac. With photographs by Dorothea Lange. (Viking has my full blessing to use that as a blurb.)

If you're going to live in London, you might as well live in London. For me, that's what this city is all about. You can feel the Dickensian grit, the ghosts of Jack the Ripper and Fagin. The bright lights of the City, the gaslights of the back streets. It's the ultimate melting pot - everyone has lived here - the Huguenots, the Jews, Bangladeshis... You can buy the best bagels, the best curry, in London.

I shall never forget, in that moment, how instantly conscious I became of my manhood. The primitive deeps of my nature stirred. I felt myself masculine, the protector of the weak, the fighting male. And, best of all, I felt myself the protector of my loved one. She leaned against me, so light and lily-frail, and as her trembling eased away it seemed as though I became aware of prodigious strength. I felt myself a match for the most ferocious bull in the herd, and I know, had such a bull charged upon me, that I should have met it unflinchingly and quite coolly, and I know that I should have killed it.

His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.

That a president is inevitably put forward and elected by the forces of established wealth and power means usually that he will be indentured by the time he reaches office. But in fact he is the freest of men if he will have the courage to think so and, at least theoretically, could be so transported by the millions of people who have endorsed his candidacy as to want to do the best for them. He might come to solemn appreciation of the vote we cast, in all our multicolored and multigendered millions, as an act of trust, fingers crossed, a kind of prayer. Not that it’s worked out that way. In 1968 Richard Nixon rebounded from his defeat at the hands of Jack Kennedy, and there he was again, his head sunk between the hunched shoulders of his three-button suit and his arms raised in victory, the exacted revenge of the pod people. That someone so rigid and lacking in honor or moral distinction of any kind, someone so stiff with crippling hatreds, so spiritually dysfunctional, out of touch with everything in life that is joyful and fervently beautiful and blessed, with no discernible reverence in him for human life, and certainly with never a hope of wisdom, but living only by pure politics, as if it were some colorless blood substitute in his veins—that this being could lurchingly stumble up from his own wretched career and use history and the two-party system to elect himself president is, I suppose, a gloriously perverse justification of our democratic form of government.

Nowadays, enormous importance is given to individual deaths, people make such a drama out of each person who dies, especially if they die a violent death or are murdered; although the subsequent grief or curse doesn't last very long: no one wears mourning any more and there's a reason for that, we're quick to weep but quicker still to forget. I'm talking about our countries, of course, it's not like that in other parts of the world, but what else can they do in a place where death is an everyday occurrence. Here, though, it's a big deal, at least at the moment it happens. So-and-so has died, how dreadful; such-and-such a number of people have been killed in a crash or blown to pieces, how terrible, how vile. The politicians have to rush around attending funerals and burials, taking care not to miss any-intense grief, or is it pride, requires them as ornaments, because they give no consolation nor can they, it's all to do with show, fuss, vanity and rank. The rank of the self-important, super-sensitive living. And yet, when you think about it, what right do we have, what is the point of complaining and making a tragedy out of something that happens to every living creature in order for it to become a dead creature? What is so terrible about something so supremely natural and ordinary? It happens in the best families, as you know, and has for centuries, and in the worst too, of course, at far more frequent intervals. What's more, it happens all the time and we know that perfectly well, even though we pretend to be surprised and frightened: count the dead who are mentioned on any TV news report, read the birth and death announcements in any newspaper, in a single city, Madrid, London, each list is a long one every day of the year; look at the obituaries, and although you'll find far fewer of them, because an infinitesimal minority are deemed to merit one, they're nevertheless there every morning. How many people die every weekend on the roads and how many have died in the innumerable battles that have been waged? The losses haven't always been published throughout history, in fact, almost never. People were more familiar with and more accepting of death, they accepted chance and luck, be it good or bad, they knew they were vulnerable to it at every moment; people came into the world and sometimes disappeared at once, that was normal, the infant mortality rate was extraordinarily high until eighty or even seventy years ago, as was death in childbirth, a woman might bid farewell to her child as soon as she saw its face, always assuming she had the will or the time to do so. Plagues were common and almost any illness could kill, illnesses we know nothing about now and whose names are unfamiliar; there were famines, endless wars, real wars that involved daily fighting, not sporadic engagements like now, and the generals didn't care about the losses, soldiers fell and that was that, they were only individuals to themselves, not even to their families, no family was spared the premature death of at least some of its members, that was the norm; those in power would look grim-faced, then carry out another levy, recruit more troops and send them to the front to continue dying in battle, and almost no one complained. People expected death, Jack, there wasn't so much panic about it, it was neither an insuperable calamity nor a terrible injustice; it was something that could happen and often did. We've become very soft, very thin-skinned, we think we should last forever. We ought to be accustomed to the temporary nature of things, but we're not. We insist on not being temporary, which is why it's so easy to frighten us, as you've seen, all one has to do is unsheathe a sword. And we're bound to be cowed when confronted by those who still see death, their own or other people's, as part and parcel of their job, as all in a day's work. When confronted by terrorists, for example, or by drug barons or multinational mafia men.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards, Martin blurted out: "Say, there's something I'd like to ask you." The man smiled and paid attention. "When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you call?" Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat of the effort. "Why I'd say any time," the man answered. "Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see, it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university." "Then call again." "What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he demanded abruptly. "No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only too pleased to assist you." Martin looked at him admiringly. "If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said. "I beg pardon?" "I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest." "Oh," said the other, with comprehension. "What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?" "I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her up on the telephone and find out." "I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away. He turned back and asked: "When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?" "Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' always until you come to know her better." So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. "Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the borrowed books.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had be- come quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards, Martin blurted out:- "Say, there's something I'd like to ask you." The man smiled and paid attention. "When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you call?" Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat of the ef- fort. "Why I'd say any time," the man answered. "Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see, it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university." "Then call again." "What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he de- manded abruptly. "No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is not ex- actly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only too pleased to as- sist you." Martin looked at him admiringly. "If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said. "I beg pardon?" "I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest." "Oh," said the other, with comprehension. "What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?" "I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her up on the telephone and find out." "I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away. He turned back and asked:- "When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?" "Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' always - until you come to know her better." So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. "Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the borrowed books.

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

Of course he would say that. Of course he would use the one thing I wanted the most to try to keep me from getting myself killed. It was his best leverage. Except for one thing. The thing I wanted most wasn’t London anymore. The thing I wanted most was Jack. I hung up the phone. Screw London. I was already running.

The Wolf and the Good Shepherd (tale) It is said that a long time ago, a wolf stalked the sheep of shepherds on the outskirts of London. He was a strong wolf, with beautiful fur and soft, seductive speech. He had eaten many sheep from many shepherds and boasted about it. However, he had never managed to eat any of Pastor Jack's sheep, who was old and very careful, always keeping an eye on his flock, which was also not very large. Still, it was the best cared for herd in the Kingdom. He was always well fed, cared for, groomed and disease-free. The wolf was very angry with Pastor Jack, because he had once tried to eat a small sheep from the flock and the shepherd hit him hard on the head with his staff. On the wolf's face, a large scar reminded him of that incident. One day, seeing that some sheep had strayed away from the flock, the wolf thought: “well, I'm not going to attack them, since killing or two wouldn't satisfy me. I want the pastor.” His sheep approached and the wolf bent down and pretended to be afraid, and the sheep said to him: “what animal are you and why are you afraid, we are just sheep”. The wolf then said: “I'm afraid of sheep, once your shepherd, a very cruel man attacked me and hurt me and since then, even though I'm a wolf, I've only eaten grass”. The sheep looked at him, with an expression of doubt, but kindness being the essential nature of sheep, they believed him and said: “it can't be Pastor Jack, he is very kind, he always takes care of us, he is always attentive to us” . The wolf then got up and looking at them said: “you are wrong, he just wants you to take your wool, don't you see that he is a tyrant who rules you, who takes you here and there, and you don't they can have a little fun, be free like me, walk through the forest, go wherever I want – he’s always with that cruel stick pulling them and taking them wherever he wants.” The sheep then listened carefully and returned to the flock. When they returned to the herd, the others said that they had spoken to a wolf, that it had not attacked them and that it had told them the story about the shepherd. The next day, more sheep went to the boundary between the field and the forest and there they met the wolf, who told the same story, but this time sadder. They all raged against the shepherd and said: “Friend wolf, you have been so kind to us and told us the truth, we had never thought about how the shepherd oppresses us, tomorrow we will tell all the sheep what happened and we will run away from Pastor Jack ”. And so it was, the next day, all the sheep went to the edge of the forest, something that the shepherd found strange, having followed them. The wolf then said to them: “come with me into the forest, dear friends, I will show you how good it is to be free”. And so, they all went into the forest, with the shepherd following them, watching them from afar. At one point, the sheep got lost and the shepherd shouted loudly and called them. The wolf, then, taking advantage of the mess, attacked the shepherd first, like a jugular bite in the throat. Afterwards, he had fun running after each of the sheep and killing them, without even eating the meat. The last sheep, before being killed, said to the wolf: “you were so kind to us, why are you doing this? We have never seen a smile from the pastor and you are so friendly.” The wolf then said to her: “sympathy is not synonymous with care or devotion. The pastor may never have given you a smile, but he cares just like you. I, on the other hand, pretended to be short-lived and now I was able to eat all of you and take revenge on the pastor.” Moral of the story: “the wolf will always like the sheep that he can attack and devour and will always hate the Shepherd”.

It is said that a long time ago, a wolf stalked the sheep of shepherds on the outskirts of London. He was a strong wolf, with beautiful fur and soft, seductive speech. He had eaten many sheep from many sheepherders and boasted about it. However, he had never managed to eat any of Shepherd Jack's sheep, who was old and very careful, always keeping an eye on his flock, which was also not very large. Still, it was the best cared for herd in the Kingdom. He was always well fed, cared for, groomed and disease-free. The wolf was very angry with the shepherd Jack, because he had once tried to eat a small sheep from the flock and the shepherd hit him hard on the head with his staff. On the wolf's face, a large scar reminded him of that incident. One day, seeing that some sheep had strayed away from the flock, the wolf thought: “well, I'm not going to attack them, since killing or two wouldn't satisfy me. I want the sheepherder.” His sheep approached and the wolf bent down and pretended to be afraid, and the sheep said to him: “what animal are you and why are you afraid, we are just sheep”. The wolf then said: “I'm afraid of sheep, once your shepherd, a very cruel man attacked me and hurt me and since then, even though I'm a wolf, I've only eaten grass”. The sheep looked at him, with an expression of doubt, but kindness being the essential nature of the sheep, they believed him and said: “he can't be our Shepherd, he is very kind, he always takes care of us, he is always attentive to our us". The wolf then got up and looking at them said: “you are wrong, he just wants you to take your wool, don't you see that he is a tyrant who rules you, who takes you here and there, and you don't they can have a little fun, be free like me, walk through the forest, go wherever I want – he’s always with that cruel stick pulling them and taking them wherever he wants.” The sheep then listened carefully and returned to the flock. When they returned to the herd, the others said that they had spoken to a wolf, that it had not attacked them and that it had told them the story about the shepherd. The next day, more sheep went to the boundary between the field and the forest and there they met the wolf, who told the same story, but this time sadder. They all raged against the sheepherder and said: “Friend wolf, you have been so kind to us and told us the truth, we had never thought about how the sheepherder oppresses us, tomorrow we will tell all the sheep what happened and we will run away from him.” And so it was, the next day, all the sheep went to the edge of the forest, something that the sheep shepherd found strange, having followed them. The wolf then said to them: “come with me into the forest, dear friends, I will show you how good it is to be free”. And so, they all went into the forest, with the shepherd following them, watching them from afar. At one point, the sheep got lost and the shepherd shouted loudly and called them. They, however, hid from the sheep shepherd. The wolf, then, taking advantage of the mess, attacked the sheepherder first, like a bite in the jugular, killing him instantly. Afterwards, he had fun running after each of the sheep and killing them, without even eating the meat, for pure fun. The last sheep, before being killed, said to the wolf: “you were so kind to us, why are you doing this? We never saw a smile from the sheepherder and you were so nice to us, we thought you were a friend.” The wolf then said to her: “sympathy is not synonymous with care or devotion. The sheepherder may never have given them a smile, but he cared just like you. I, on the other hand, feigned a short-lived sympathy and now I have managed to kill all of you and your foolish sheepherder.” Moral of the story: “Be careful what you put your trust in. The wolf will always like the sheep which it can attack and devour and will always hate the Shepherd.

Well, Buck, my boy,” he went on in a genial voice, “we’ve had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at that. You’ve learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all ‘ll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I’ll whale the stuffin’ outa you. Understand?

London, noisy, noisome, nattering London: aged, ageless, dignified, eccentric in her ways - seat of empire, capital of all the world; that indomitable grey lady of drab aspect but sparkling personality - was at her very, very best and most radiant. And Holmes, ebullient and uncommonly chatty, was in a mood to match.