Life Is Not A Matter Of Holding

He Became Quicker Of Movement Than The Other Dogs, Swifter Of Foot, Craftier, Deadlier, More Lithe, More Lean With Ironlike Muscle And Sinew, More Enduring, More Cruel More Ferocious, And More Intelligent. He Had To Become All These Things, Else He Would Not Have Held His Own Nor Survived The Hostile Environment In Which He Found Himself.

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.

On The Sled, In The Box, Lay A Third Man Whose Toil Was Over, - A Man Whom The Wild Had Conquered And Beaten Down Until He Would Never Move Nor Struggle Again. It Is Not The Way Of The Wild To Like Movement. Life Is An Offense To It, For Life Is Movement; And The Wild Aims Always To Destroy Movement.

There Are, Broadly Speaking, Two Types Of Drinkers. There Is The Man Whom We All Know, Stupid, Unimaginative, Whose Brain Is Bitten Numbly By Numb Maggots; Who Walks Generously With Wide-spread, Tentative Legs, Falls Frequently In The Gutter, And Who Sees, In The Extremity Of His Ecstasy, Blue Mice And Pink Elephants.... The Other Type Of Drinker Has Imagination, Vision. Even When Most Pleasantly Jingled He Walks Straight And Naturally, Never Staggers Nor Falls, And Knows Just Where He Is And What He Is Doing. It Is Not His Body But His Brain That Is Drunken.

I Write For No Other Purpose Than To Add To The Beauty That Now Belongs To Me. I Write A Book For No Other Reason Than To Add Three Or Four Hundred Acres To My Magnificent Estate.