Quote collection
180 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"...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."
"The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end."
"Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write."
"Not all the monsters have fangs."
"It's better to stand by someone's side than by yourself"
"In a saturated population life is always cheap."
"Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal."
"Strength is an empty shell."
"As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt."
"When, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark."
"And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down."
"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."
"He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do."
"Stupid women, and all are stupid, think the first winning of the man the final victory. Then they settle down and grow fat, and stale, and dead, and heartbroken. Alas, they are so stupid. But you, little infant-woman with your first victory, you must make your love-life an unending chain of victories. Each day you must win your man again. And when you have won the last victory, when you can find no more to win, then ends love. Finis is written, and your man wanders in strange gardens."
"The great task demanded of man is reproduction. He is urged by passion to perform this task. Passion, working through the imagination, produces love. Passion is the impelling factor, imagination the disturbing factor; and the disturbance of passion by imagination produces love."
"Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible -- if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say."
"This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone."
"My mistake was in ever opening the books."
"I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. "Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!""
"It is good that man should accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh, and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion."