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Martin Eden Quotes

Martin Eden
by Jack London
Want to Read  

“ But I am I. And I won't subordinate

my taste to the unanimous judgment
of mankind
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 189

“ limited minds can recognize

limitations only in others.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 63

“ Who are you, Martin Eden? he

demanded of himself in the looking-
glass, that night when he got back to
his room. He gazed at
himself long and curiously. Who are
you? What are you? Where do
you belong? You belong by rights to
girls like Lizzie Connolly.
You belong with the legions of toil,
with all that is low, and
vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong
with the oxen and the drudges,
in dirty surroundings among smells
and stenches. There are the
stale vegetables now. Those potatoes
are rotting. Smell them,
damn you, smell them. And yet you
dare to open the books, to
listen to beautiful music, to learn to
love beautiful paintings, to
speak good English, to think thoughts
that none of your own kind
thinks, to tear yourself away from the
oxen and the Lizzie
Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a
woman who is a million
miles beyond you and who lives in the
stars! Who are you? and what
are you? damn you! And are you going
to make good?
Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: love, music, painting, smell

Like · 55

“ He was a man without a past, whose

future was the imminent grave and
whose present was a bitter fever of
living.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 52

“ Every book was a peep-hole into the

realm of knowledge. His hunger fed
upon what he read, and increased.
Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: books, knowledge

Like · 40

“ The more he studied, the more vistas

he caught of fields of knowledge yet
unexplored, and the regret that days
were only twenty-four hours long
became a chronic complaint with him.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 36

“ Why didn’t you dare it before? he

asked harshly.
When I hadn’t a job? When I was
starving? When I was just as I am now,
as a man, as an artist, the same Martin
Eden? That’s the question. I’ve been
asking myself for many a day. My
brain is the same old brain. And what
is puzzling me is why they want me
now. Surely they don’t want me for
myself, for myself the same olf self
they did not want. They must want me
for something else, for something that
is outside of me, for something that is
not I. Shall I tell you what that
something is? It is for the recognition I
have recieved. That recognition is not
I. Then again for the money I have
earned and am earnin. But money is
not I. And is it for the recognition and
money, that you now want me?
Jack London, Мартин Иден
Tags: life, love, martin-eden, thought

Like · 29

“ Here was intellectual life, he thought,

and here was beauty, warm and
wonderful as he had never dreamed it
could be. He forgot himself and stared
at her with hungry eyes. Here was
something to live for, to win to, to fight
for—ay, and die for. The books were
true. There were such women in the
world. She was one of them. She lent
wings to his imagination, and great,
luminous canvases spread themselves
before him whereon loomed vague,
gigantic figures of love and romance,
and of heroic deeds for woman’s sake
—for a pale woman, a flower of gold.
And through the swaying, palpitant
vision, as through a fairy mirage, he
stared at the real woman, sitting there
and talking of literature and art. He
listened as well, but he stared,
unconscious of the fixity of his gaze or
of the fact that all that was essentially
masculine in his nature was shining in
his eyes. But she, who knew little of
the world of men, being a woman, was
keenly aware of his burning eyes. She
had never had men look at her in such
fashion, and it embarrassed her. She
stumbled and halted in her utterance.
The thread of argument slipped from
her. He frightened her, and at the
same time it was strangely pleasant to
be so looked upon. Her training
warned her of peril and of wrong,
subtle, mysterious, luring; while her
instincts rang clarion-voiced through
her being, impelling her to hurdle
caste and place and gain to this
traveller from another world, to this
uncouth young fellow with lacerated
hands and a line of raw red caused by
the unaccustomed linen at his throat,
who, all too evidently, was soiled and
tainted by ungracious existence. She
was clean, and her cleanness revolted;
but she was woman, and she was just
beginning to learn the paradox of
woman.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 26

“ Is love so gross a thing that it must

feed upon publication and public
notice ? It would seem so.
Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: appearance, image, love,
superficiality

Like · 24

“ But I am I, and I won't subordinate my

taste to the unanimous judgment of
mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't
like it, that's all; and there is no reason
under the sun why I should ape a
liking for it just because the majority
of my fellow-creatures like it, or make
believe they like it. I can't follow the
fashions in the things I like or dislike.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 20

“ Nietzsche was right. I won't take the

time to tell you who Nietzsche was, but
he was right. The world belongs to the
strong - to the strong who are noble as
well and who do not wallow in the
swine-trough of trade and exchange.
The world belongs to the true
nobleman, to the great blond beasts, to
the noncompromisers, to the 'yes-
sayers.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 20

“ Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the

door closed behind the laundryman.
He was becoming anti-social. Daily he
found it a severer strain to be decent
with people. Their presence perturbed
him, and the effort of conversation
irritated him. They made him restless,
and no sooner was he in contact with
them than he was casting about for
excuses to get rid of them.
Jack London, Martin Eden

Like · 18

“ He was disappointed in it all. He had

developed into an alien. As the steam
beer had tasted raw, so their
companionship seemed raw to him.
He was too far removed. Too many
thousands of opened books yawned
between them and him. He had exiled
himself. He had travelled in the vast
realm of intellect until he could no
longer return home. On the other
hand, he was human, and his
gregarious need for companionship
remained unsatisfied. He had found
no new home.
Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: alienation, disappointment, life

Like · 18

“ Let beauty be your end. Why should

you mint beauty into gold? Anyway,
you can’t;
Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: art, beauty

Like · 16

“ Beauty is the only master to serve.

Jack London, Martin Eden
Tags: beauty

Like · 14

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