Man always gets less than he demands from life; and so little do they demand, that the less than little they get cannot save them. - Jack London

It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. (Ch.1)

The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living., though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made.... He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

"Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form."

[Letter to Max E. Feckler, Oct. 26, 1914]