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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 18

All Quotes Ambition Art Business Challenges Chaos Character Children Choices Confusion Country Criticism Design Desire Doubt Dying Earth Effort Evil Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Freedom Friendship Giving Gold Greatness Greed Guilt Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell Home Honesty Horror House Hunger Hurt Inspirational Journey Joy Kindness Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Loss Love Luck Lying Magic Mathematics Memories Morning Mountain Nature Obsession Pain Past Philosophy Pleasure Prayer Pride Quality Rain Reading Reality Responsibility Running Sadness Science Sickness Sin Singing Sleep Socialism Son Sorrow Soul Struggle Suffering Summer Teaching Travel Understanding Waiting Wall War Water Wife Winning Winter Worry Writing

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

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

Angel, White, Snow

John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.50, Penguin

I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America - a ridiculous situation.

Travel, Taken, Home

What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.

Song, Men, Keys

"The Log from the Sea of Cortez". Book by John Steinbeck. Chapter 4, 1951.

The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.

Eye, Sound, Ribs

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.8, Penguin

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Writing, Play, Giving

"Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton. Chapter "On Critics", 1977.

Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.

Ambition, Successful, Boys

He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.

Hurt, Feelings, Needs

John Steinbeck (1993). “Cannery Row”, p.23, Penguin

I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.

Writing, Want, Way

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.164, Penguin

It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness: cut out the support, and beauty will sink from sight.

Cutting, Sight, Support

John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.59, Penguin

Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

Literature, Body, Way

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.100, Hamilton Books

Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

Book, Nuts, Guy

John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.35, Hamilton Books

...men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.

Fighting, Men, Bulls

"The Short Novels of John Steinbeck".

They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.

Strong, Eye, People

"The Winter of Our Discontent". Book by John Steinbeck. Part One, Chapter III, 1961.

But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.

Beautiful, Important, Stuff

I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

Sitting Still, Celibacy, Cleanliness

In nature two things do not occur-the wheel and good taste.

Nature, Two, Taste

Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

One Day, Doe, Way

John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.85, Penguin

In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.

Kings, Business, Men

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.149, Penguin

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

Wrath, Waiting, Size

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.26, Hamilton Books

Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.

Dream, Real, Gone

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.208, Penguin

You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.

Differences, Looks, Ifs

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.175, Hamilton Books

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.

Men, Hazards, May

John Steinbeck (2013). “Of Mice and Men: Teacher's Deluxe Edition”, p.80, Penguin

If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.

Wrath, Acres, Awful

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.165, Hamilton Books

The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

People, House, Hatred

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.350, Hamilton Books

A fallow field is a sin.

Hard Work, Fields, Action

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.188, Hamilton Books

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