John Steinbeck Quotes

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.

And is usually true of a man of one idea, [Charles] became obsessed.

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous.

It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that'swhy.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

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.

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

I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

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.

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.

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.

Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments

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

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.

Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?

I ain't never done nothin' that wasn't part sin.

It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.

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.

All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent

And don't worry about losing. If i is right, it happens - the main thing is not to hurry.Nothing good gets away.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

If we climb this high I swear we'll never die.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.

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.

... but she was also bewilderingly lonely... Abra had lost her gift for being alone.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

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

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?

And now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.

We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.' - Tom Joad (Jr.)

What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.

Life is knowledge, livin it is Succes!

I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need... Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not.-Uncle John

Everything seems to work with a recurring rhythm except life. There is only one birth and only one death. Nothing else is like that.

And then I saw what I was to see so many times on the journey--a look of longing. "Lord! I wish I could go.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Her face looked for the answer that is always concealed in language.

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.

An' I got to thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'.

I do love her, and that’s odd because she is everything I detest in anyone else.

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.