White Fang, written by Jack London, is a classic novel that tells the story of a wild wolf-dog hybrid named White Fang. Set in the harsh wilderness of the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush, the book explores themes of survival, loyalty, and the innate instincts of both humans and animals.
Throughout the novel, White Fang’s journey is depicted through vivid descriptions and profound insights into the animal’s mind. Jack London’s masterful storytelling has given us many memorable quotes that capture the essence of White Fang’s experiences and the profound messages the book conveys.
In this article, we have compiled a list of 20 quotes from White Fang that will not only remind you of the gripping story but also offer valuable wisdom and contemplation.
Read these quotes from White Fang
“He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”
“To be awake was to be alive. He wanted to feel the rush of life in his throat, to be emptied and purified, to be filled with strength and resolution. And it was at this age that there occurred in him the first symptoms of the disease to which he afterward succumbed.”
“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”
“Again, as on the preceding day, he ordered his dinner sent in, and again he encountered the waiter with the tray, and again he put him off with the statement that he was not hungry. But the warm, tender, summer days passed on, and he neither ate nor worked. The hunger he felt was for the master. The works of man appealed to him with even a greater power than before. The toil-slave wore out his body and died. It did not matter. There were plenty to take his place.”
“He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.”
“He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton’s fire, rather than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection and punishment. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king,—king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.”
“But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton’s fire, rather than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization.”
“It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.”
“But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defense of Judge Miller’s riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defense of a moral consideration and so save his hide.”
“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”
“This is the explanation of Grey Beaver’s conduct. It is true, White Fang was a bit of a lop-eared creature, and ambled more than she walked; but her husband knew that she loved him, and it was his dog’s job to love him in return. He did not mind the lop-eared creature’s ambling. It had long been ambling in his mind. What of it? She loved him, and he was worthy of it. It was all right. He was satisfied.”
“All of this had been in the past. Then White Fang had come into his life. And, in spite of all his own struggles and rebellions, he had come to know that he loved White Fang. It was a relationship that did not permit of talking, seldom of thinking, and never of acting. It merely smoldered and glowed in him, without breaking forth into flame. It was a possession of his wife, a responsibility upon him that had its place in the orderly scheme of things.”
“He was a silent, cautious fellow. His movements were deliberate and cautious, and he showed a remarkable economy of effort in everything he did. He never wasted his strength, never tumbled about, never pushed or pulled, but always went exactly where he intended going in the swiftest, easiest way. He had been waiting for some time to find an opportunity of discussing the important subject of his future with the countess, but had not found it convenient; until, one morning, while she was engaged with her husband, he found her alone in her boudoir.”
“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With the Judge’s sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working partnership; with the Judge’s grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.”
“He would lie in the bed and finally, with the coming of dawn, he would doze into a brief oblivion, while the early morning sun streamed in through the open windows. And then his mind would flash back again to the Sunday in the park, to the green grass and gray hills, to the blackbirds and butterflies. It would flash back to the big house and the comfortable beds, and to the doctors, and the nurses, and the rest. It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature, a mountain forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.”
“It was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.”
“The summer solstice was approaching, and the daily dose of sunlight administered by the sun god increases from day to day with a power that is almost unbearable. But White Fang was unaware of it. He knew only that the goal of his desire was getting nearer, and that that was sufficient reason for joy. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.”
“The love and fame he had enjoyed and the great things he had done meant nothing to him. The blissful, hysterical happiness in which he lived lasted only until the moment when the fullness of the blissful moment began to abate. Then the feeling of sadness and despair came over him again. And it was even stronger than before. Only now there was a difference; whereas before he had taken his despair and sadness for granted, it had now become a new experience for him.”
“The wolf’s life is a hard one. The she-wolf herself was proof of that. As the long night waned, she grew weaker and weaker. She met her death the following spring, when the wolves ran the Caribou across the Mackenzie and she got a shot in the left flank from a straggling bullet. She had hidden herself in the ground, squealing and writhing in the throes of her labor; and there, by her, the two wolf-dogs had dug her a hole and lain down to wait her out.”
“There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to White Fang as he waited for the deflection of the stick that would tell him when to slide along the floor out through the open door.”
“He had never been struck by a club in his life. He did not know what a club was. But there was something in the blow that shocked him. He yelped as the tender skin came away from the sticky stuff beneath. The next blow followed quickly, and he was beaten off the bed and across the floor. Halfway to the door, he yielded and remained quiet, while the blows continued to fall upon him.”
“He did not know why he had fired into the air. He had felt a subtle influence that had escaped him when the assemblage was dragging him down. But it had come back again with the first glimpse of the dawn, the terrible morning of the south-east trade, when, draped in red, it swam blood-red in his eyes, quivered in his nostrils, and dominated his brain. And so it was, when the doom of the seventy years old buccaneer descended upon him, that he followed the sea life as he would have followed nothing else on earth.”
“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.”
These quotes from White Fang offer a glimpse into the profound themes and captivating storytelling that make Jack London’s novel a timeless classic. Whether you are a fan of adventure, nature, or exploring the depths of human and animal nature, White Fang is a must-read that will leave a lasting impression on your heart and mind.
