White Fang (Primary source)
White Fang is a novel by Jack London set in the Yukon and Northwest Territories during the Klondike era. It follows White Fang, a wolf-dog born in the wild to a wolf mother and a partly domesticated father. From an early age, he is shaped by hunger, danger, and the constant competition for survival in the northern wilderness.
“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 realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing meat and battling to kill it. 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.”
Jack London
“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”
— Jack London Primary source“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
— Jack London Secondary source“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.”
— Jack London Primary source“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”
— Jack London Primary source“My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren’t with me I haven’t a thing in the world.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn’t you make the most of it?”
— Ayn Rand Disputed“This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source