Name the film

[12xu]

What movie (or novel) is this quote from:

“But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a school, how did you learn to read and write?” I queried.

“In the English merchant service. Cabin-boy at twelve, ship’s boy at fourteen, ordinary seaman at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock of the fo’c’sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself—navigation, mathematics, science, literature, and what not. And of what use has it been? Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when I am beginning to diminish and die. Paltry, isn’t it? And when the sun was up I was scorched, and because I had no root I withered away.”

“But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple,” I chided.

“And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple,” he answered grimly. “No man makes opportunity. All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. The Corsican knew. I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me. And, Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living man, except my own brother.”

“And what is he? And where is he?”

“Master of the steamship Macedonia, seal-hunter,” was the answer. “We will meet him most probably on the Japan coast. Men call him ‘Death’ Larsen.”

“Death Larsen!” I involuntarily cried. “Is he like you?”

“Hardly. He is a lump of an animal without any head. He has all my—my—”

“Brutishness,” I suggested.

“Yes,—thank you for the word,—all my brutishness, but he can scarcely read or write.”

“And he has never philosophized on life,” I added.

“No,” Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness. “And he is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books.”

[MikoTython]

Apparently The Sea Wolf / Wolf Larsen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Larsen_(film)

Looks grand. I'll check it out here soon...

Jack London did spend time at sea, so he knew whereof he wrote.

[12xu]

You are correct Miko. The Jack London novel is tremendous. The 1941 version with Edgar G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen is very good. There are several others.

[MikoTython]

You are correct Miko. The Jack London novel is tremendous. The 1941 version with Edgar G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen is very good. There are several others.

Ok, that's the one I'll watch.

[MikoTython]

You are correct Miko. The Jack London novel is tremendous. The 1941 version with Edgar G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen is very good. There are several others.

London was, like Abe Lincoln and Capt. James Cook and others, an autodidact - a self-taught intellect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts

[FrankTheTank]

Freddy Got Fingered?