John Steinbeck Quotes
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We could live offa the fatta the lan’.
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.
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So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.
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Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
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If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
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A man is a lonely thing.
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I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
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Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
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The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.
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Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
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His ear heard more than is said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
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'When you argue with a child,' she said warmly, 'you give a good argument and the child says yah, yah! You understand him and he doesn't listen, so the child wins.'
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
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'It has always seemed strange to me,' said Doc. 'The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.'
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'What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.'
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No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
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If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.
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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
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Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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'I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.'
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We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.