You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Interpretation
Inspiration must be pursued actively rather than passively waiting for it.
This quote by Jack London conveys the idea that waiting for inspiration to strike can lead to missed opportunities. Instead, it encourages individuals to take initiative and actively seek out creativity and motivation, as if hunting for it with determination and strength, much like one would with a club.
In practice
During a team meeting to brainstorm new ideas, one might say, 'Remember, as Jack London said, we can't wait for inspiration; let's go after it with a club!'
The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering. He still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.
He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survived the hostile environment in which he found himself.
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.
Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny.
Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomized life as a voracious appetite, and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
I thought, 'Let's make it a check list. What if I got my education even though I lost my mother, even though my dad is in a shelter?' and looking at these things as hurdles to go over. I could inspire myself.
Kindle the taper like the steadfast star_x000D_ _x000D_ Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,_x000D_ _x000D_ And add each night a lustre till afar_x000D_ _x000D_ An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God.
Once you choose hope, anything's possible
'Wonder Woman' is much more than a cartoon character. She's fighting for truth and justice and the secret self that exists in all women and girls. There's a moral fiber and a goodness about her that all women have.
When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams.'
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