Frases de Jack London

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“Un hueso para el perro no es caridad. La caridad es el hueso compartido con el perro cuando estás tan hambriento como el perro.”

“Lo Salvaje aún permanecía en él y el lobo en él simplemente dormía.”

“¡Prefiero ser cenizas que polvo! Prefiero que mi chispa se apague en un resplandor brillante a que sea sofocada por la podredumbre seca. Preferiría ser un soberbio meteoro, cada átomo de mí en magnífico resplandor, que un planeta adormecido y permanente. La función apropiada del hombre es vivir, no existir. No desperdiciaré mis días tratando de prolongarlos. Aprovecharé mi tiempo.”

“Yo no vivo de lo que el mundo piensa en mí, sino por lo que pienso de mí mismo.”

“Luchamos mejor, morimos mejor y vivimos mejor por aquello que amamos.”

“Thornton tenía la duda pintada claramente en el semblante, pero aquello despertó su espíritu de lucha, el que hace crecer al hombre ante las dificultades, le impide aceptar lo imposible y lo hace sordo a todo lo que no sea el clamor de la batalla.”

“Sus pies son hermosos, sus ojos radiantes, sus brazos y sus pechos son el paraìso, su encanto supera todas las maravillas que jamàs hayan deslumbrado al hombre; y, del mismo modo que el imàn arrastra inevitablemente al metal, la mujer arrastra inevitablemente a los hombres.”

“La naturaleza tiene muchas artimañas para convencer al hombre de su finitud —el incesante fluir de las mareas, la furia de la tormenta, la sacudida del terremoto, el largo retumbar de la artillería del cielo—, pero la más tremenda, la más sorprendente de todas es la fase pasiva del silencio blanco. Cesa todo movimiento, el aire se despeja, los cielos se vuelven de latón; el más pequeño susurro parece un sacrilegio, y el hombre se torna tímido, asustado del sonido de su propia voz. Única señal de vida que viaja a través de las espectrales inmensidades de un mundo muerto, tiembla ante su propia audacia, se da cuenta de que su vida no vale más que la de un gusano. Surgen extraños pensamientos no llamados, y el misterio de todas las cosas pugna por darse a conocer. Y el temor a la muerte, a Dios, al universo, se apodera de él, la esperanza en la resurrección y la vida, su deseo de inmortalidad, la lucha vana de la esencia aprisionada. Entonces, si alguna vez ocurre, el hombre camina solo con Dios.”

“El anciano meneó tristemente la cabeza. —Volverá a empezar la misma historia hablándose a sí mismo—. Los hombres se multiplicarán, y luego lucharán unos contra otros. Cuando hayan redescubierto la pólvora se matarán a miles, y luego a millones. Y así, por medio del fuego y de la sangre, se formará una nueva civilización.”

“Los hombres inteligentes son crueles. Los hombres estúpidos son monstruosamente crueles.”

“Sabía que era inútil interponerse entre un necio y su necedad.”

“Y como Black Leclère era también un demonio, los dos formaban una buena pareja.”

“Estaban vivos a medias, o quizá menos.”

“Sé que el linaje humano está destinado a retroceder más y más en la noche de los tiempos primitivos, antes de que vuelva a iniciarse la ascensión sangrienta hacia aquello que llamamos la civilización.”

“Estaba celoso; por eso me encantó.”

“No cabía predecir lo que había de suceder, porque, con todo lo dotado de vida, las cosas ocurrían siempre, por una razón u otra, de modo distinto.”

“¿La vida? ¡Bah! No tiene ningún valor. Dentro de lo barato, es de lo más barato.”

“Mi error fue abrir los libros.”

“A medida que uno se debilita, uno es menos susceptible al sufrimiento. Hay menos dolor porque hay menos que pueda ser herido.”

“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.”