Martin Eden Quotes
"He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him. The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. 'He understands,' was his thought. 'He’ll see me through all right.'"
"He walked at the other’s heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his legs spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea."
"He recoiled from side to side between the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his mind."
"He did not know painting. He had been brought up on chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or far."
"In imagination he dared to think of her lips on his, and so vividly did he imagine that he went dizzy at the thought and seemed to rift through clouds of rose-petals, filling his brain with their perfume."
"And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star."
"He forgot his shoes and stared long, till his lips began to move and he murmured, 'Ruth.'"
"He had never known women who had made him better. They had always had the counter effect of making him beastly."
"He was drunken in new and more profound ways - with Ruth, who had fired him with love and with a glimpse of higher and eternal life; with books, that had set a myriad maggots of desire gnawing in his brain; and with the sense of personal cleanliness he was achieving."
"He was famished for a sight of the girl whose slender hands had gripped his life with a giant’s grasp."
"Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read."
"It was the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of the one gave no clue that the ideas of another were obsolete."
"He had become interested, in a day, in economics, industry, and politics."
"For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned that there were warring social philosophies."
"He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know."
"His mind was fallow. It had lain fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the books was concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing."
"He had never been jaded by study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth that would not let go."
"Martin Eden’s head was in a state of addlement when he went away after several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions of a dozen unusual words."
"Poetry, however, was his solace, and he read much of it, finding his greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable."
"He loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred him profoundly."
"But you do talk well. Just think how you have improved in the short time I have known you."
"It's fair hell, I know, but I kind of hate to see you come off the wagon, Mart."
"I was in hospital, once. It was beautiful. Typhoid—did I tell you?"
"He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty."
"The more he studied, the more vistas he caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored."
"He was aware of a sadness akin to that with which one leaves home and family."
"His ignorant and unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless."
"It was only when he crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, that she asserted herself to him in fleeting memories."
"And the next moment he was standing over it, staggering and swaying on shaky legs."
"I lika da have one milka ranch—good milka ranch. Plenty cow, plenty land, plenty grass."
"I wish you was in it, you pigheaded Dutchman!"
"What’s the good of waitin’ another moment. That’s the land of nothin’ to do out there."
"They ain’t no use in me askin’ you to change your mind an’ hit the road with me?"
"I’m goin’ to see you again, Mart, before you an’ me die. That’s straight dope."
"Slave an’ sweat! An’ when you’re dead, you’ll rot the same as me."
"Money is the sinews of war, in my case—money and patience."
"The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more."
"I should never have thought of you in that way if we had not had this talk."
"You see, I didn’t know what this was like."
"Could you help loving father? Then it is the same with me."
"I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me."
"You worship at the shrine of the established."
"I have been in many ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw you that first night."
"I never thought to love him, but, you see, I do."
"I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now. How did you make me love you?"
"It was not real. That’s what’s the matter with it. It’s not real."
"I merely maintain my right as an individual."
"You have a good mind, and I am confident you would succeed as a lawyer."
"I saw his wheel and watch go, and after each event I saw his vigor bloom again."
"Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent, the market price for art."
"The disappointment of it, the lie of it, the infamy of it, were uppermost in his thoughts."
"A change seemed to come over the latter, and he watched curiously, till '$2.00' burned in its stead."
"He had taken the bait, the newspaper lies about writers and their pay, and he had wasted two years over it."
"He would do what Ruth wanted him to do, what everybody wanted him to do—get a job."
"But he grew cunning. There was no need for him to wander through his mind."
"Quite naturally he found himself at a mangle, feeding starched cuffs."
"The thought of going to work reminded him of Joe—Joe, tramping through the land of nothing-to-do."
"He was danced until his teeth rattled and his head ached, and he marvelled that the Dutchman was so strong."
"It was a bit of society verse, airy and delicate, which he had named 'The Palmist.'"
"The only wise Republicans are the millionaires and their conscious henchmen."
"You still believe in equality, and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from day to day, are busily engaged in burying equality."
"He anchored his faith to that, and was confident that the really first-class magazines would pay an unknown writer at least an equal rate, if not a better one."
"Martin watched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breasted coat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum who had once been he."
"But then, there are so many questions on which I am not sure. I grow timid when I am face to face with my human frailty."
"The chief qualification of ninety-nine percent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers."
"They arrived by achieving the impossible. They did such blazing, glorious work as to burn to ashes those that opposed them."
"If I fail, I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor’s wife."
"You love me because I am somehow different from the men you have known and might have loved."
"I have crammed my apprenticeship and telescoped it. With you at the end awaiting me, I have never shirked."
"There are great critics, but they are as rare as comets."
"All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by the way."
"You want me to go to work? Do you think they are so radical?"
"I am afire with what I have to say in verse, and fiction, and essay."
"You’ll grow out of it, young man. Time is the best cure for such youthful distempers."
"In fact, you are both suffering from the disease you think you find in me. As for me, I am immune."
"I am like a weary linnet, for my throat has no song in it; I have had my singing minute. I have done."
"There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is its prophet."
"It’s all Greek, I know, and I won’t bother you any more with it. But remember one thing. There aren’t half a dozen individualists in Oakland, but Martin Eden is one of them."
"You could throw me in the dirt an’ walk on me. An’ you’re the only man in the world that can."
"I could die for you. I could die for you."
"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."
"The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to breathe the air into his bursting lungs."
"Life was to him like strong, white light that hurts the tired eyes of a sick person."
"And in his secret heart he was wondering why any man wanted to marry. It seemed an amazing and incomprehensible thing."
"He had found no new one, and now he could not find the old one."
"This surcease from life had failed him. It was too much. He turned on the electric light and tried to read."
"But no more unsatisfactory great man ever sailed on a ship."
"He slept much. After breakfast he sought his deck-chair with a magazine he never finished."
"When life became an aching weariness, death was ready to soothe away to everlasting sleep."