Jack London: Doing

Jack London was American author, journalist, and social activist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Jack London: 154 quotes47 likes

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

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

“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 diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.”

Jack London book The Sea-Wolf

Wolf Larsen, Chapter Six
The Sea-Wolf (1904)

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

Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard (21 August 1903)

“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.”

Jack London book John Barleycorn

Source: John Barleycorn (1913), Ch. II

“Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.”

Jack London book John Barleycorn

Source: John Barleycorn (1913), Ch. V

“Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”

Jack London Index:London - White Fang, 1906.djvu

White Fang (1906)

“Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.”

Jack London Martin Eden

Source: Martin Eden (1909), Ch. XXXII

“The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right.”

Jack London book The Iron Heel

Source: The Iron Heel (1907), Ch. XXI