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The Call of the Wild quotes
12 quotes from The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #215 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.
He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club.
So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.
Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.
He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.
He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.
For the pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work.
Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.
The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.