The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.

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.

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

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.

In a saturated population life is always cheap.

He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread.

Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousness so wide apart that they can never be united.