“But behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams… Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.”
-The Call Of The Wild
“No charge or pains were wanting in my education. My father designed me for the law; yet nothing would serve me but I must go to sea, both against the will of my father, the tears of my mother, and the entreaties of friends. One morning my father expostulated very warmly with me: What reason, says he, have you to leave your native country, where there must be a more certain prospect of content and happiness, to enter into a wandering condition of uneasiness and uncertainty? … He pronounced these words with such a moving and paternal eloquence, while floods of tears ran down his aged cheeks, that it seemed to stem the torrent of my resolutions. But this soon wore off, and a little after I informed my mother that I could not settle to any business, my resolutions were so strong to see the world; and begged she would gain my father’s consent only to go one voyage… I was then, I think, nineteen years old, when I met a school-fellow of mine, going along with his father, who was a master of a ship, to London; and acquainted him with my wandering desires; he assured me of a free passage and a plentiful share of what was necessary. Thus, without imploring a blessing, or taking farewell of my parents, I took a shipping on the first of September, 1651.”
-Robinson Crusoe
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially when my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
-Moby Dick
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
-Walden
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