Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.
San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.
You stand on dead men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly.
And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.
Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
Some sorts of truth are truer than others.
The greatest of the arts is the conquering of men.
Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.
There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.
In a saturated population life is always cheap.
Ever bike? Now that’s something that makes life worth living!
Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.
Somehow, the love of the islands, like the love of a woman, just happens. One cannot determine in advance to love a particular woman, nor can one so determine to love Hawaii.
The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.
I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.
Denied the outlet, through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mental processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself to thoughts of trickery.
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.
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.
The man, with his brain, can pierce the intoxicating mirage of things and contemplate a frozen universe in the most perfect indifference to him and his dreams.