Robert W. Service Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. Even goats may have starlight in their eyes.

Robert W. Service

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling...let us go

Robert W. Service

#9. 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

#10. 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

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

Robert W. Service

#12. The Wanderlust has got me ... by the belly-aching fire

Robert W. Service

#13. 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

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

Robert W. Service

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

#19. 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

#20. Be sure your wisest words are those you do not say.

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. A promise made is a debt unpaid

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

#29. Dirt is just matter out of place.

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

#32. 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

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

Robert W. Service

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

Robert W. Service

#35. 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

#36. I remember little of the Yukon or what I wrote there.

Robert W. Service