69 result(s) for John Steinbeck Quotes.
"Nothing good gets away."
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome."
"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
"Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good."
"Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love."
"I wonder how many times people give up just before a breakthrough – when they are on the very brink of success."
"Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it."
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"When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone."
"All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up."
"I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything."
"I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."
"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world."
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome."
"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."
"For all life is holy, and if you are not afraid of life, you are not ready for it."
"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."
"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another."
"I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never seen."
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."
"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?"
"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."
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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."
"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."
"It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it."
"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world."
"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?"
"Change is the only thing that people can count on."
"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I'm convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."
"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world."
"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."
"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless."
"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."
"A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ."
"What a scant pattern I found in life and existence, but what a helpless despair."
"A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure."
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"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."
"We spend our time in a way that we are ordered to spend it by irresponsible, beautiful, and probably intelligent guides who are determined to save us from any suffering, to insure our happiness."
"When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people."
"People don't take trips, trips take people."
"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."
"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike."
"We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it."
"The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty."
"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."
"We are all caught in some great moral transgression."
"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man."
"I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession."
"Every man has a certain capacity for evil. It's the classic thing in psychology."
"The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit."
"I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen."
"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome."
"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."
"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."
"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
"I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment."
"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true."
"The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."
"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system."
"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
"There are times when a man with a power of speech can make his influence felt."
"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments."
"No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."
"Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love."
"A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."
"Failure has taken a fatal disease."
"I guess there are never enough books."
"Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."
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