Jack London Quotes

Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically.

Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy five and yet not ever truly to have lived.

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.

Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing.

You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things, all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Often and often must he have thought, that, to be or not to be forever, was a question, which must be settled; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation upon which we feel that there can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul.

It is so easy to exist instead of live.

Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature has never put the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one needs to answer.

Don’t you want to be alive before you die?

it seems a silly kind o' business to bring us into the world at all for no special reason 'cept to take us out of it again just as folks 'ave learned to know us a bit and find us useful.

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation

We are all born to die—the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

Could anything be absurder than a man? The animal who knows everything about himself--except why he was born and the meaning of his unique existence.

I finally did not understand if we are living to survive or we are living to die!