John Steinbeck, East Of Eden Quotes

A man without words is a man without thought.

All great and precious things are lonely.

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

Courage and fear were one thing too.

Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.

In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one.

A man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he's got his guard up. But in church a man's wide open.

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.

Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it.

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 to the world.

The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb.

And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layer of frailty men want to be good and want be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.

...without money you cannot fight money.

Well, a man's mind can't stay in time the way his body does.

Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too.

Caleb and Aaron—now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.

She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it.

During the years he was never sick, except of course for the chronic indigestion which was universal, and still is, with men who live alone, cook for themselves, and eat in solitude.

Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well.

...evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..

Will liked to live so that no one could find fault with him, and to do that he had to live as nearly like other people as possible.

Timshel - thou mayest