Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

—Jack London in White Fang

doing life accomplishment achievement

About Jack London

Portrait of Jack London

John Griffith London (né Chaney; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune...

More quotations from Jack London

Age is never so old as youth would measure it.

perception change youth old age

The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise.

—Jack London in The Sea-Wolf

fear loneliness hatred

He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.

—Jack London in The Sea-Wolf

ignorance knowledge loss

He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.

—Jack London in The Sea-Wolf

morality immorality

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

More quotations tagged with “achievement”

I just don't know why they're shooting at us. All we want to do is bring them democracy and white bread. Transplant the American Dream. Freedom. Achievement. Hyperacidity. Affluence. Flatulence. Technology. Tension. The inalienable right to an early coronary sitting at your desk while plotting to stab your boss in the back.

—Alan Alda as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H

technology freedom democracy achievement America

If you don't try at anything, you can't fail. It takes back bone to lead the life you want.

—Richard Yates in Revolutionary Road

life accomplishment risk failure achievement trying

Making weapons is what we know how to do best, the supreme achievement of late-twentieth-century American civilization. To this blessed work we assign our finest intellect and the largest share of our treasure, and in the magnificence of an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile we find our moral and aesthetic equivalent of the Sistine ceiling and Chartres Cathedral.

—Lewis Lapham

weapons morality achievement America civilization missiles

Do not run toward pain, but do not run from it, either. Pain is your guide. Pain is what guides a person in every serious undertaking. Unless an aching longing and passion arises in someone to get or achieve something, he will never get or achieve it.

—Andrew Harvey

power will pain achievement

We see achievement as purposeful and monolithic, like the sculpting of a massive tree trunk that has first to be brought from the forest and then shaped by long labor to assert the artist's vision, rather than something crafted from odds and ends, like a patchwork quilt, and lovingly used to warm different nights and bodies.

—Mary Catherine Bateson

purpose vision art work achievement

History

2 Aug 2015 Added