The Sea Wolf Quotes
"It was good that men should be specialists, I mused."
"They wanted to live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they screamed."
"Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime."
"The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive forever."
"It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality."
"The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength."
"I believe that life is a mess. It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move."
"But it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward."
"The cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf Larsen shorthanded."
"I had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost at its start and returned to the comforts and conveniences of a roof."
"His diagnosis was correct, however, for he was seized with occasional sicknesses, during which he vomited blood and suffered great pain."
"It’s the hand of God, I’m tellin’ you. 'Tis a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there’s more behind and comin’, or else—"
"We work from the time we are born until we die, in my country. That’s why we live so long."
"The sleepers did not mind. There were eight of them—the two watches below—and the air was thick with the warmth and odour of their breathing."
"I have seen our decks covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers running red."
"I’ve found your legs with a vengeance. You’re quite an individual."
"I was aware of a hungry outreaching for her, as of a starving man for bread."
"The breath of his nostrils, this carrying his life in his hands and struggling for it against tremendous odds."
"Wolf Larsen’s broad shoulders, his hands gripping the spokes and holding the schooner to the course of his will, himself an earth-god, dominating the storm."
"We hove to and ran away, hove to and ran away, and ever astern the struggling patch of sail tossed skyward and fell into the rushing valleys."
"Wolf Larsen gave them little time for thought. He at once put the Ghost upon her course—a course which meant the seal herd and not Yokohama harbour."
"Good God! sir, what kind of a craft is this?" he cried.
"He regarded her smilingly. Her eyes fell before his gaze, but she lifted them again, and defiantly, to mine."
""Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?" he demanded, certain of her answer, a triumphant vindictiveness in his voice."
""Even to the peeling of potatoes and the washing of dishes," I answered, "to say nothing to wringing their necks out of very fellowship.""
""Mr. Van Weyden speaks with the voice of authority," Wolf Larsen laughed."
""We are very hospitable upon the Ghost. Mr. Van Weyden has discovered that. We do everything to make our guests feel at home, eh, Mr. Van Weyden?""
""I may have learned to stand on my own legs," I retorted. "But I have yet to stamp upon others with them.""
"All my wrongs and humiliations flashed upon me with a dazzling brightness."
"I sprang upon him, blindly, insanely, and drove the knife into his shoulder."
"Please, please," she pleaded, and she disarmed me by the words."
"And now we are no longer travelling toward Japan."
"Why, we’ll be clamorous for something to do."
"Nay, I answered, it is you who are a brave woman."
"I don’t see that it would help matters if you, too, sat up and were chilled."
"It is better and finer to love than to be loved."
"Put down that gun. I want to ask you some questions."
"You can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are impotent."
"But what were you doing while all this was going on?"
"I know I am capable of doing anything these days."
"You know how he leaped across the opening of the lazarette."
"But I know also how I crept about and avoided him."
"You’d hardly expect them to avoid Wolf Larsen without my feet inside of them."
"I can never get them clean again," she wailed, "nor soften the weather beat."
"I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!"
"I have never thought so clearly. I can ponder life and death like a Hindu sage."
"Bosh!" was his retort. "It simply means that in the attack on my brain the higher psychical centres are untouched."
"One kiss, dear love," I whispered. "One kiss more before they come."
"It’s not over the hole," she add. "Will you have to begin all over?"
"I have known it all my life. It was my father's name for my mother."
"My woman, my one small woman," I said, my free hand petting her shoulder in the way all lovers know though never learn in school.