His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him.
Jack LondonI would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
Jack LondonHe had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
Jack LondonA bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.
Jack LondonOn the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over, - a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement.
Jack London