After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it.
 Jack London, The Sea-Wolf (1904). copy citation

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Author Jack London
Source The Sea-Wolf
Topic love life
Date 1904
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1074/1074-h/1074-h.htm

Context

“And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life in the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value upon my own life. I never had so much reason for living, was my concluding thought; and after that, until I dozed, I contented myself with trying to pierce the darkness to where I knew Maud crouched low in the stern-sheets, watchful of the foaming sea and ready to call me on an instant’s notice.
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