Robert Service Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Robert 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 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 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 Service
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betides 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 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 Service
Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow; And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know.

Robert 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 Service
The waves have a story to tell me, As I lie on the lonely beach; Chanting aloft in the pine-tops, The wind has a lesson to teach; But the stars sing an anthem of glory I cannot put into speech.

Robert Service
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell... and that one is Dan McGrew.

Robert Service
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A helf-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 what the music meant... hunger and night and the stars.

Robert 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 Service
Mud is mankind in the moulding,
Heaven's mystery unfolding

Robert Service
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day

Robert Service
It's coming soon and soon, mother, it's nearer every day,
When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say;
When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil
Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil;
When we, the Workers, all demand: What are we fighting for?'...
Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness — War.

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

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

Robert Service
Some say God was tired when he made it [the land of Alaska];
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I'm one.

Robert 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.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, — Lo, how she makes it plain!

Robert Service
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.

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

Robert Service
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane —
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core

Robert 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 Service
Just have one more try—it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

Robert Service
There's the wretched rent to pay,
Yet I glower at pen and ink:
Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray,
It is later than you think!

Robert Service
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

Robert Service
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-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.

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

Robert Service