Quotes from The People of the Abyss

“Class supremacy can rest only on class degradation”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“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, quote from The People of the Abyss

“The myriads that raise the cry of hunger wail in the greatest empire in the world”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“But at the best, it is a dull, animal happiness, the content of the full belly. The dominant note of their lives is materialistic. They are stupid and heavy, without imagination. The Abyss seems to exude a stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which wraps about them and deadens them. Religion passes them by. The Unseen holds for them neither terror nor delight. They are unaware of the Unseen; and the full belly and the evening pipe, with their regular “arf an’ arf,” is all they demand, or dream of demanding, from existence.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“And yet the quality of the life is good. All human potentialities are in it. Given proper conditions, it could live through the centuries, and great men, heroes and masters, spring from it and make the world better by having lived.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Also, as I looked at the mite of a youth with the heart of a lion, I thought, this is the type that on occasion rears barricades and shows the world that men have not forgotten how to die.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Such verdicts are crimes against truth. The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“É indispensável retirar dos postos de comando todos os gestores que, estúpida e criminosamente, puseram o império à beira da falência. Fizeram um trabalho de sapa e revelaram uma incompetência invulgar, além do que desviaram fundos públicos. Cada pobre exausto e destroçado, cada cego, cada criança nascida na cadeia, cada homem, cada mulher e cada criança torturados pela fome sofrem simplesmente porque a riqueza comum foi desviada por todos esses governantes. Nenhum dos responsáveis dessa classe dirigente pode deixar de ser condenado na barra do tribunal da Humanidade.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion.  Far different is the luminous and varied Western swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency.  And after all, since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; there is an audacity about it, an adventurousness and defiance that is better than sheer filthiness.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Man no longer follows instinct with the old natural fidelity. He has developed into a reasoning creature, and can intellectually cling to life or discard life just as life happens to promise great pleasure or pain.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“the human soul is a lonely thing”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“A exploração da mão-de-obra, os salários de miséria, as hordas de desempregados e a multidão sem abrigo e sem casa é o espectáculo a que se assiste quando há mais homens do que trabalho.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Quando a procura é maior do que a oferta, impera a selecção. Em todos os ramos da indústria, os menos competentes são rejeitados - e, como os recusam, já não estão em condições de se manterem à tona, pelo que descem até atingirem o nível em que os aceitam, um emprego numa fábrica em que não lhes seja exigida nenhuma aptidão. Consequência inevitável: os menos aptos deixam-se arrastar até ao fundo do abismo, essa espécie de matadouro onde ficam reduzidos à miséria.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Quando há mais homens que trabalho, todos os que sobram são relegados para o contingente dos incapazes e como tal ficam condenados a uma destruição penosa e progressiva.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“A supremacia de determinada classe só pode impor-se por via da degradação das outras classes sociais.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“From the slimy, spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and, they were eating them.  The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside.  They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o’clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“withal they were cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing. The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion. Far different is the luminous and varied Western swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency. And after all, since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; there is an audacity about it, an adventurousness and defiance that is better than sheer filthiness.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Kendi bebeğinizin doğup gelişmesi, hayata dair bilgileri ve nesneleri edinmesi için uygun görmediğiniz bir yer, başka insanların bebeklerinin de hayata dair bilgileri ve nesneleri edinmesi için uygun değildir. Bu altın kural çok basit ve yeterlidir. Ekonomi bilimi ve en güçlünün hayatta kalması ilkesi bundan farklı bir şey söylüyorsa, gidip kendilerini asabilirler. Kendiniz için yeterli görmediğiniz bir şey, başka insanlar için de yeterli değildir; işte o kadar.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“What is not good enough for you is not good enough for other men, and there’s no more to be said.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“The workers, as a class, are being more and more segregated by their economic masters; and this process, with its jamming and overcrowding, tends not so much toward immorality as unmorality.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Wherever a man of vigour and stature manages to grow up, he is haled forthwith into the army. A soldier, as Bernard Shaw has said, 'ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“A soldier, as Bernard Shaw has said, “ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“it. The man with the high standard of living will always do more work and better than the man with the low standard of living.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Man cannot be worked worse than a horse is worked, and be housed and fed as a pig is housed and fed, and at the same time have clean and wholesome ideals and aspirations.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“Then arises the third and inexorable question: If Civilisation has increased the producing power of the average man, why has it not bettered the lot of the average man? There can be one answer only—MISMANAGEMENT.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“As some one has said, they do everything for the poor except get off their backs”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

“And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the stones by the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the social fabric while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish. At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile. If they reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself. The work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need them.”
― Jack London, quote from The People of the Abyss

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Popular quotes

“The Dying Man"

in memoriam W.B. Yeats

1. His words

I heard a dying man
Say to his gathered kin,
“My soul’s hung out to dry,
Like a fresh salted skin;
I doubt I’ll use it again.

“What’s done is yet to come;
The flesh deserts the bone,
But a kiss widens the rose
I know, as the dying know
Eternity is Now.

“A man sees, as he dies,
Death’s possibilities;
My heart sways with the world.
I am that final thing,
A man learning to sing.

2. What Now?

Caught in the dying light,
I thought myself reborn.
My hand turn into hooves.
I wear the leaden weight
Of what I did not do.

Places great with their dead,
The mire, the sodden wood,
Remind me to stay alive.
I am the clumsy man
The instant ages on.

I burned the flesh away,
In love, in lively May.
I turn my look upon
Another shape than hers
Now, as the casement blurs.

In the worst night of my will,
I dared to question all,
And would the same again.
What’s beating at the gate?
Who’s come can wait.

3. The Wall

A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind
To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn!
The figure at my back is not my friend;
The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn.
I found my father when I did my work,
Only to lose myself in this small dark.

Though it reject dry borders of the seen,
What sensual eye can keep and image pure,
Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn?
A slow growth is a hard thing to endure.
When figures our of obscure shadow rave,
All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave.

The wall has entered: I must love the wall,
A madman staring at perpetual night,
A spirit raging at the visible.
I breathe alone until my dark is bright.
Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn
When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun.

4. The Exulting

Once I delighted in a single tree;
The loose air sent me running like a child–
I love the world; I want more than the world,
Or after image of the inner eye.
Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone;
I die into this life, alone yet not alone.

Was it a god his suffering renewed?–
I saw my father shrinking in his skin;
He turned his face: there was another man,
Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid.
He quivered like a bird in birdless air,
Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere.

Fish feed on fish, according to their need:
My enemies renew me, and my blood
Beats slower in my careless solitude.
I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed.
I think a bird, and it begins to fly.
By dying daily, I have come to be.

All exultation is a dangerous thing.
I see you, love, I see you in a dream;
I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum,
And that slow humming rises into song.
A breath is but a breath: I have the earth;
I shall undo all dying with my death.

5. They Sing, They Sing

All women loved dance in a dying light–
The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon!
Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one,
Then settles back to shade and the long night.
A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn,
And that cry takes me back where I was born.

Who thought love but a motion in the mind?
Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing?
I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing;
Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend.
I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds,
They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds.

I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone:
What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!–
Eternity defined, and strewn with straw,
The fury of the slug beneath the stone.
The vision moves, and yet remains the same.
In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am.

The edges of the summit still appall
When we brood on the dead or the beloved;
Nor can imagination do it all
In this last place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.”
― Theodore Roethke, quote from The Collected Poems

“The universe has no opinion of us. No matter how much we want to pretend, real life does not contain the quality of story. No arcs, no morals, no meaning. Life is what we make of it.”
― John Joseph Adams, quote from The Living Dead

“There was another reason why I wasn't ready to tell you all this that night in the airport."
"What other reason?"
"Guess what today is?"
"Um, Tuesday?"
"Even better. It comes around once every four years. Last day of February? Ringing any bells?" He let that settle for a long moment before he curled his face into the half grin she loved so much. "It's leap day, baby.”
― Marie Force, quote from Everyone Loves a Hero

“The silence is not suppression; instead, it is all there is.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

“This is the first day of the rest of my life. So why is my hair sticking up like a cockerel?”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing

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