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Jack London

Jack London,  The Valley of the Moon

“ Mortimer retorted.
“Did you see me working at San Jose? Saxon is going to use her head. It's about time you woke up to that. A dollar and a half a day is what is earned by persons who don't use their heads. And she isn't going to be satisfied with a dollar and a half a day. Now listen. I had a long talk with Mr. Hale this afternoon. He says there are practically no efficient laborers to be hired in the valley.”
“I know that,” Billy interjected. “All the good men go to the cities. It's only the leavin's that's left. The good ones that stay behind ain't workin' for wages.”
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  White Fang

“ He had been observed, the news had been carried to the dead dog’s master, the squaws remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was beset by many angry voices. But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured.
White Fang became hated by man and dog. During this period of his development he never knew a moment’s security. The tooth of every dog was against him, the hand of every man. He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with curses and stones by his gods.
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Hearts of Three

“ In the Valley there is a silly weak demented creature who pretends to read the future by magic. An altogether atrocious and blood-thirsty female is she. I am not denying that in physical beauty she is beautiful. For beautiful she is, as a centipede is beautiful to those who think centipedes are beautiful. You see what has happened. She has sent Henry and Leoncia out of the Valley by some secret way, while Francis has elected to remain there with her in sin——for sin it is, since there exists in the valley no Catholic priest to make their relation lawful. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Jerry of the Islands

“ He knew that he was violating a taboo of life, just as he knew he was violating a taboo if he sprang into Meringe Lagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles. Great love is always capable of expressing itself in sacrifice and self-immolation. And only for love, and for no lesser reason, could Jerry have made the leap.
He struck on his side and head. The one impact knocked the breath out of him; the other stunned him. Even in his unconsciousness, lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movements of his legs as if running for’ard to Skipper.
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  War of the Classes

“ The strength of the union today, other things remaining equal, is proportionate to the skill of the trade, or, in other words, proportionate to the pressure the surplus labor army can put upon it. If a thousand ditch-diggers strike, it is easy to replace them, wherefore the ditch-diggers have little or no organized strength. But a thousand highly skilled machinists are somewhat harder to replace, and in consequence the machinist unions are strong. The ditch-diggers are wholly at the mercy of the surplus labor army, the machinists only partly. To be invincible, a union must be a monopoly. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Kempton-Wace Letters

“ But our social wisdom insists that we obey the choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinement, which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel us to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste for the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her," says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a heretic to your own breed, Herbert. It is you who would forsake our present social wisdom, ruling modern men by laws which obtained in primitive life. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Sea-Wolf

“ Still another time, he stole into the steerage, possessed himself of a loaded shot-gun, and was making a rush for the deck with it when caught by Kerfoot and disarmed.
I often wondered why Wolf Larsen did not kill him and make an end of it. But he only laughed and seemed to enjoy it. There seemed a certain spice about it, such as men must feel who take delight in making pets of ferocious animals.
“It gives a thrill to life,” he explained to me, “when life is carried in one’s hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay.
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Michael…

“ For the rest of the voyage Michael had the run of the ship. Friendly to all, he reserved his love for Steward alone, though he was not above many an undignified romp with the fox-terriers.
“The most playful-minded dog, without being silly, I ever saw,” was Dag Daughtry’s verdict to the Shortlands planter, to whom he had just sold one of his turtle-shell combs. “You see, some dogs never get over the play-idea, an’ they’re never good for anything else. But not Killeny Boy. He can come down to seriousness in a second.
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Smoke Bellew

“ Snass told Smoke that evening. “You can't hide your trail, you see. Anton got away when the snow was gone. My young men can travel as fast as the best white man; and, besides, you would be breaking trail for them. And when the snow is off the ground, I'll see to it that you don't get the chance Anton had. It's a good life. And soon the world fades. I have never quite got over the surprise of finding how easy it is to get along without the world.”
“What's eatin' me is Danny McCan,” Shorty confided to Smoke. “He's a weak brother on any trail.
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Hearts of Three

“ It is some devil of a pursuer sent out by our enemies who have vainly sought our hiding-place through the centuries. He must not escape to make report, for our enemies are powerful, and we shall be destroyed. Go. Kill him that we may not be killed.”
About the fire, which had been replenished at intervals throughout the night, Leoncia, Francis, and Torres lay asleep, the latter with his new-made sandals on his feet and with the helmet of Da Vasco pulled tightly down on his head to keep off the dew.
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Cruise of the Snark

“ I said to Charmian, speaking of Mr. Sellers and his libel; “a petty trader’s panic. But never mind; our troubles will cease when once we are away from this and out on the wide ocean.”
And in the end we sailed away, on Tuesday morning, April 23, 1907. We started rather lame, I confess. We had to hoist anchor by hand, because the power transmission was a wreck. Also, what remained of our seventy-horse-power engine was lashed down for ballast on the bottom of the Snark. But what of such things? They could be fixed in Honolulu, and in the meantime think of the magnificent rest of the boat!
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Martin Eden

“ A thousand dollars a month is not too much to buy for you all I want you to have. A salary of five hundred a month would be too small. That forty-five dollars is just a starter. Wait till I get my stride. Then watch my smoke.”
Ruth misunderstood his slang, and reverted to cigarettes.
“You smoke more than enough as it is, and the brand of tobacco will make no difference. It is the smoking itself that is not nice, no matter what the brand may be. You are a chimney, a living volcano, a perambulating smoke-stack, and you are a perfect disgrace, Martin dear, you know you are.”
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Little Lady of the Big House

“ Paula protested to Graham. “It’s just the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He’s always playing jokes himself. He relaxes that way. I’ll wager, right now, it was Dick’s suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to get O’Hay into the stag room. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  A Daughter of the Snows

“ It's got to go. Them islands"—waving his hand indefinitely down river—"can't hold up under more pressure. If they don't let go the ice, the ice'll scour them clean out of the bed of the Yukon. Sure! But I've got to be chasin' back. Lower ground down our way. Fifteen inches on the cabin floor, and McPherson and Corliss hustlin' perishables into the bunks."
"Tell McPherson to be ready for a call," Jacob Welse shouted after him. And then to Frona, "Now's the time for St. Vincent to cross the back-channel."
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Adventure

“ A man of Tudor’s type gets on my nerves. One demands more repose from a man.”
Joan felt that she did not quite agree with his judgment; and, somehow, Sheldon caught her feeling and was disturbed. He remembered noting how her eyes had brightened as she talked with the newcomer—confound it all, was he getting jealous? he asked himself. Why shouldn’t her eyes brighten? What concern was it of his?
A second boat had been lowered, and the outfit of the shore party was landed rapidly. A dozen of the crew put the knocked-down boats together on the beach.
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Valley of the Moon

“ Ten days later they drove into Williams, in Colusa County, and for the first time again encountered a railroad. Billy was looking for it, for the reason that at the rear of the wagon walked two magnificent work-horses which he had picked up for shipment to Oakland.
“Too hot,” was Saxon's verdict, as she gazed across the shimmering level of the vast Sacramento Valley. “No redwoods. No hills. No forests. No manzanita. No madronos. Lonely, and sad—”
“An' like the river islands,” Billy interpolated. “Richer 'n hell, but looks too much like hard work.
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  War of the Classes

“ The capitalist class has a glimmering consciousness of the class struggle which is shaping itself in the midst of society; but the capitalists, as a class, seem to lack the ability for organizing, for coming together, such as is possessed by the working class. No American capitalist ever aids an English capitalist in the common fight, while workmen have formed international unions, the socialists a world-wide international organization, and on all sides space and race are bridged in the effort to achieve solidarity. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Cry for Justice…

“ How often have we smiled sadly to hear tell of the inexhaustible wealth of France, and the number of great fortunes—we workers, and toilers, and intellectuals, and men and women who from our very [760] birth have been given up to the wearying task of keeping ourselves from dying of hunger, often struggling in vain, often seeing the very best of us succumbing to the pain of it all,—we who are the moral and intellectual treasure of the nation! You who have more than your share of the wealth of the world are rich at the cost of our suffering and our poverty. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Revolution…

“ This is the question the revolutionist asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The capitalist class does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it.
If modern man’s food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000 people in the United States to-day who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are 80,000 children working out their lives in the textile factories alone?
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Scarlet Plague

“ There were always new ones coming to live in men’s bodies. Long and long and long ago, when there were only a few men in the world, there were few diseases. But as men increased and lived closely together in great cities and civilizations, new diseases arose, new kinds of germs entered their bodies. Thus were countless millions and billions of human beings killed. And the more thickly men packed together, the more terrible were the new diseases that came to be. Long before my time, in the middle ages, there was the Black Plague that swept across Europe. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  White Fang

“ During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp, inquiring, investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness.
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man’s feet, this grief has never come.
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Kempton-Wace Letters

“ They do not understand life, that is the trouble. The beast, lacking imagination, needs no rational rightness for the various acts of living, such as they need, and which they do not possess. Because of their unchecked and unbalanced imagination they mistake the half of life for the whole, and when forced to face the whole are affrighted and shocked. They do not reason that the need for perpetuation is the cause of passion; and that human passion, working through imagination and worked upon by imagination, becomes love. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Iron Heel (1908)

“ Nine years ago we socialists thought that law was aimed against labor. But it would seem that it was aimed against you, too. Congressman Wiley, in the brief discussion that was permitted, said that the bill 'provided for a reserve force to take the mob by the throat'—you're the mob, gentlemen—'and protect at all hazards life, liberty, and property.' And in the time to come, when you rise in your strength, remember that you will be rising against the property of the trusts, and the liberty of the trusts, according to the law, to squeeze you. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  The Kempton-Wace Letters

“ The charm of morning rests on a Juliet's love because its hour is young and yet old, striking the time of the past and the future. It is thus that the hunger of the race and the passion of the race become in the individual the need for happiness. The need of the race and the need of the individual are at once the same and different.
What was the point of your letter? That sexual selection obtains? I grant it. That it is incumbent upon us as intelligent men and women to call to the aid of instinct our social wisdom?
”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Burning Daylight

“ The love of a strong man is ever a lure to a normal woman, and never more strongly did Dede feel the lure than now, looking across the closed gate at Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever dream of marrying him—she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her. On the contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into his flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways than his mere magnificent muscles. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  Before Adam

“ What to you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye? A screaming incoherence and no more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of the horde. For you know not the peace of the cool caves in the cliffs, the circus of the drinking-places at the end of the day. You have never felt the bite of the morning wind in the tree-tops, nor is the taste of young bark sweet in your mouth. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  When God Laughs…

“ Tom King was an old un, but a better old un than he had ever encountered—an old un who never lost his head, who was remarkably able at defence, whose blows had the impact of a knotted club, and who had a knockout in either hand. Nevertheless, Tom King dared not hit often. He never forgot his battered knuckles, and knew that every hit must count if the knuckles were to last out the fight. As he sat in his corner, glancing across at his opponent, the thought came to him that the sum of his wisdom and Sandel's youth would constitute a world's champion heavyweight. ”
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Source: Gutenberg
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Jack London,  War of the Classes

“ And Europe, today, confesses that her greatest social problem is the labor problem, and that it is the one most closely engrossing the attention of her statesmen.
The organization of labor is one of the chief acknowledged factors in the retrogression of British trade. The workers have become class conscious as never before. The wrong of one is the wrong of all. They have come to realize, in a short-sighted way, that their masters’ interests are not their interests. The harder they work, they believe, the more wealth they create for their masters.
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Source: Gutenberg
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Works by Jack London

  • The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest
  • The Kempton-Wace Letters
  • Revolution, and Other Essays
  • War of the Classes
  • The People of the Abyss
  • The Iron Heel
  • The Star Rover
  • The Jacket (The Star-Rover)
  • Martin Eden
  • John Barleycorn
  • The Valley of the Moon
  • The Sea-Wolf
  • The Little Lady of the Big House
  • The Human Drift
  • The Mutiny of the Elsinore
  • Burning Daylight
  • A Daughter of the Snows
  • The Cruise of the Snark
  • Hearts of Three
  • Love of Life, and Other Stories
  • Michael, Brother of Jerry
  • Theft: A Play In Four Acts
  • Children of the Frost
  • Moon-Face, and Other Stories
  • Island Tales / On the Makaloa Mat
  • The Turtles of Tasman
  • The Road
  • Smoke Bellew
  • The Acorn-Planter
  • The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke

Common terms

  • trail
  • sled
  • dollars
  • deck
  • Saxon
  • cabin
  • San Francisco
  • Billy
  • Martin
  • Jerry
  • dogs
  • Michael
  • beach
  • boat
  • schooner
  • ice
  • the United States
  • mate
  • snow
  • meat
  • Yukon
  • labor
  • canoe
  • rifle
  • Joe
  • Frona
  • Dick
  • wolf

Similar authors

  • James B. Hendryx
  • Mark Twain
  • Rex Beach
  • John Henry Goldfrap
  • Roy Norton
  • William Henry Giles Kingston
  • H. De Vere Stacpoole
  • Robert W. Service
  • Harold Bindloss
  • May Kellogg Sullivan
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