Robert W. Service

“I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.”

“Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down, yet grasped at glory,Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? 'Done things' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul? Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders?(You'll never hear it in the family pew.) The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things–Then listen to the wild–it's calling you.”

“There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still;So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will.They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.”

“I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --The other kind don't matter.”

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.”

“A half-dead thing in a stark dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold.”

“There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.”

“Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.”

“A promise made is a debt unpaid.”

“Avoid extremes: be moderate In saving and in spending; An equable and easy gait Will win an easy ending.”

“Be sure your wisest words are those you do not say.”

“His life, though none too long, Was never dull: Of woman, wine and song Bill had his full.”

“Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.”

“Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wantingSo much as just finding the gold.It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,It's the forests where silence has lease;It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,It's the stillness that fills me with peace.”

“The Wanderlust has got me... by the belly-aching fire”

“The only society I like is rough and tough, and the tougher the better. There's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people.”

“I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that's not too new.”

“Of Books and Scribes there are no end:This Plague--and who can doubt it?Dismays me so, I've sadly pennedAnother book about it.”

“It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe.”

“It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.”