Robert W. Service Quotes

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

— Robert W. Service

“Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.”

— Robert W. Service

“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
”

— Robert W. Service

“A promise made is a debt unpaid”

— Robert W. Service

“I like to think that when I fall,
A rain-drop in Death's shoreless sea,
This shelf of books along the wall,
Beside my bed, will mourn for me.”

— Robert W. Service

“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.”

— Robert W. Service

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.

— Robert W. Service

No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success; If he thinks he is a winner, then he is.

— Robert W. Service

“Even goats may have starlight in their eyes.”

— Robert W. Service

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

— Robert W. Service

The man who can fight to heaven's own height is the man who can fight when he's losing.

— Robert W. Service

A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?-
Then you've a hunch was the music meant ... hunger and night and the stars.

— Robert W. Service

“Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant;
Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant;
Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant.”

— Robert W. Service

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.

— Robert W. Service

“Dirt is just matter out of place.”

— Robert W. Service

“It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung;
It glared around with fierce electric eyes.
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw;
it bellowed out for more;
It looked like some great monster in the gloom.”

— Robert W. Service

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

— Robert W. Service

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.”

— Robert W. Service

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

— 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.”

— Robert W. Service

“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.”

— Robert W. Service

“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.”

— Robert W. Service

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

— Robert W. Service

“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.”

— Robert W. Service

“I remember little of the Yukon or what I wrote there.”

— Robert W. Service

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

— Robert W. Service

“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.”

— Robert W. Service

“Our breath is brief, and being so Let's make our heaven here below, And lavish kindness as we go.”

— Robert W. Service

“The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,But you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.”

— Robert W. Service

“This is the law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive; that surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.”

— Robert W. Service

“Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit -
It's the keeping your chin up that's hard.”

— Robert W. Service

“It's easy to fight when everything's right And you're mad with the thrill and the glory; It's easy to cheer when victory's near, And wallow in fields that are gory. It's a different song when everything's wrong, When you're feeling infernally mortal; When it's ten against one, and hope there is none, Buck up, little soldier, and chortle!”

— Robert W. Service

“And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last.”

— Robert W. Service

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.

— Robert W. Service

“Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster;
There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so!
As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master,
And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe,
We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere,
The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.”

— Robert W. Service

“The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lonely mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate.”

— Robert W. Service

Ah! the clock is always slow; it is later than you think.

— Robert W. Service

“Then you've a hunch what the music meant ... hunger and night
and the stars.”

— Robert W. Service

“When children's children shall talk of War as a madness that may not be; When we thank our God for our grief today, and blazon from sea to sea In the name of the Dead the banner of Peace ... that will be Victory.”

— Robert W. Service

Carry on! Carry on! Fight the good fight and true; Believe in you mission, greet life with a cheer;

— Robert W. Service

“Old Year! upon the Stage of Time You stand to bow your last adieu; A moment, and the prompter's chime Will ring the curtain down on you.”

— Robert W. Service