Quotes by Jack London

About Jack London:

John Griffith was an American author, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.
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On Women: "What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing him a glass. "Here, down this and be good." "Because–" Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. "Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have a...

Jack London

The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidently a quotation. "That's it—foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared...

Jack London

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

Jack London

To be able to forget means sanity.

Jack London

A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clut...

Jack London

This is the first time I have heard ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myse...

Jack London

If they will only hold their hands until the season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.

Jack London

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamond...

Jack London

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum o...

Jack London

How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said. I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.

Jack London

Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.

Jack London

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

Jack London

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

Jack London

This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

Jack London

What's the bravest thing you ever did? He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.

Jack London

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On t...

Jack London

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming...

Jack London

Do you think I lie to you? No. But you think I might lie to you about dying. Yes. Okay. I might. But we're not dying. Okay.

Jack London

Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.

Jack London

Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

Jack London

And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.

Jack London

Author Bio

  • NameJack London
  • DescriptionAmerican author, journalist, and social activist
  • AliasesJohn Griffith Chaney; John Griffith "Jack" London
  • BornJanuary 12, 1876
  • DiedNovember 22, 1916
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Journalist; Novelist; Reporter; Essayist; Autobiographer