Jack London cytaty

strona 2

„Zew krwi.”

„W obliczu faktów, że człowiek współczesny żyje gorzej niż jaskiniowiec, a jego zdolność wytwórcza jest tysiąc razy większa niż jaskiniowca, jeden tylko jedyny wniosek jest możliwy: klasa kapitalistyczna źle rządzi, (…) [rządzi] karygodnie i samolubnie.”

„Nigdy nie dopuściłem do tego, aby szkoła przeszkadzała mi w kształceniu się.”

„Zamiast niszczyć wspaniałą maszynerię, która produkuje i wydajnie, i tanio, nauczmy się nad nią panować. Wykorzystajmy i wydajność, i taniość, a maszynerią sami pokierujmy. Usuńmy obecnych właścicieli i sami w ich miejsce stańmy się właścicielami tych wspaniałych urządzeń. Oto, panowie, czym jest socjalizm.”

„Judasz wydał Chrystusa na mękę krzyżową za trzydzieści srebrników. Natura ludzka nie zmieniła się od tamtych czasów.”

„Życie? Przecież ono nie ma żadnej wartości. To najtańsza z niedrogich rzeczy.”

„Ból nie jest jeszcze śmiercią – przemknęło przez gasnącą świadomość człowieka. Śmierć nie boli. To straszliwe dławienie to życie, męka życia, ostatni cios jaki zadać zdoła.”

„Niektóre rodzaje prawdy są kłamstwem i te właśnie się cieszą największym uznaniem.”

„Próżniactwo jest zbrodnią tak wielką, jak zdrada kraju i tak samo nikczemną.”

„Tęsknota za włóczęgą po nocy, po dniu
Jak pies się na łańcuchu przyzwyczajeń miota,
I oto znów się budzi z zimowego snu
Zew zwierzęcy i dziki, co wabi za wrota.”

„Dobroczynność nie polega na dawaniu kości psu. Dobroczynność to kość dzielona z psem wówczas, gdy jesteś równie głodny jak on.”

„Ciemna puszcza jodłowa z obu stron okalała zastygły potok. Wiatr otrzepał ze śnieżnego puchu drzewa czarne i widmowe w zmierzchu dnia. Głęboka cisza
zaścieliła kraj. Ziemia wydawała się nieruchoma, półżywa jak rozpacz, opuszczona i zastygła. Nie był to już nawet wyraz smutku. Włóczył się ponad nią jak gdyby śmiech dziwaczny, stokroć bardziej niż smutek ponury; śmiech gorzki niby skrzywienie ust sfinksa, przenikliwy jak mróz, nasiąkły okrucieństwem niewinnej obojętności. Zwycięski, stłumiony uśmiech wszystkowiedzących wieków nad przemijaniem i wysiłkiem życia. Dzikość. Brutalna dzikość Północy o sercu zastygłym.”

“He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.”

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.”

“The function of man is to live, not to exist.”

“My mistake was in ever opening the books.”

“They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.”

“Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny.”

“So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.”

“He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.”

“more you drink
more you want”

“You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly”

“It was the worst hurt he had ever known.”

“I was jealous; therefore I loved.”

“I am. I was. I am not. I never am.”

“Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods?”

“Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Against the wall, near the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them, noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De Quincey. There were scientific works too, among which were represented men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin.”

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

“Age is never so old as youth would measure it.”

“Hist, now, between you an' meself and the stanchion there, this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an' the Ghost'll be a hell ship like she's always been since he had hold iv her.”

“Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in the nobility and excellence of the human. I believe that spiritual sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day. And last of all, my faith is in the working-class. As some Frenchman has said, "The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending."”

“I was five years old the first time I got drunk.”

“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.”

“There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.”

“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.”

“My first thought was that a man who had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I received.”

“…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.”

“Then one can't make a living out of poetry?"
"Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.”