Remember that truth is the greatest thing in the world. If you will be great, you will be true. If you suppress the truth, if you hide truth, if you do not rise up and speak out in meeting, if you speak out in meeting without speaking the whole truth, then are you less true than truth and by that much are you less than great.
~ Jack London
slip:4a938.
The three great things of life are: Good health; Work; And a philosophy of life. I may add, nay, must add, a fourth—Sincerity. Without this, the other three are without avail; And with it you may cleave to greatness and sit among giants.
~ Jack London
slip:4a933.
This is discontent, but it is not the discontent of pessimism. It is noble discontent which is the secret of progress. Only the pusillanimous are content. Heart’s desires are divine discontents. Only the unsatisfied do things. The satisfied do nothing. Unsatisfaction is the stimulus to achievement. Satisfaction is destruction and leads down to the chamber of death.
~ Jack London
slip:4a928.
Please remember I am talking about the world as it is. The men who act without thinking, and the men who both think and act, are the ones who mould the world. The man who thinks and does not act never moulds the world. He may think that he does—but that, too, is only a thought, the thought of a deedless, actionless thinker.
~ Jack London
slip:4a923.
Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter. And lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.
~ Jack London
slip:4a637.
Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
~ Jack London
slip:4a435.
The flame itself has a soothing, mesmerizing effect. So often, the conversation around a campfire hits a lull, and everyone finds themselves gazing into the glowing, crackling bowels of the fire. It seems to say, “Welcome home.”
~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2009/08/people-fire/
He also mentions Jack London’s, “To Build a Fire” which you should totally read as well.
ɕ
I early learned that there were two natures in me. This caused me a great deal of trouble, till I worked out a philosophy of life and struck a compromise between the flesh and the spirit. Too great an ascendancy of either was to be abnormal, and since normality is almost a fetish of mine, I finally succeeded in balancing both natures. Ordinarily they are at equilibrium; yet as frequently as one is permitted to run rampant, so is the other. I have small regard for an utter brute or for an utter saint.
~ Jack London
slip:4a496.
Life is not always a matter of holding good cards,
~ Jack London
but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
slip:4a62.