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...men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.
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Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
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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.
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Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.
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Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?
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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.
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San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.
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And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and interested him.
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Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
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One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.
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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.
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The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.
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I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
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You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
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I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
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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.
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I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.
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He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.
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I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.
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Age is never so old as youth would measure it.
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Affluence means influence.
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Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?
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My first thought was that a man who had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I received.
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It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At once he became an enigma.