Robert W. Service Quotes

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

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

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.

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ 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

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

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.

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service

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.

~ 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

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

~ Robert W. Service

It's the plugging away that will win you the day So don't be a piker old pard! Just draw on your grit it's so easy to quit- It's the keeping your chin up that's hard.

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service

A promise made is a debt unpaid.

~ Robert W. Service

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

~ Robert W. Service