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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 24

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

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

Running, Book, Rivers

John Steinbeck (1965). “Of mice and men”, Bantam

It is the nature of a person as he/she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.

Change For The Better, Protest, Grows

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

Country, Rain, Book

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.2, Hamilton Books

A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.

Snakes, Water, Shadow

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

Memories, Thinking, Long

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.51, Penguin

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.

Life, Cutting, Men

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.363, Penguin

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

Writing, Magic, Stories

Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.

Dog, Travel, Reading

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.12, Penguin

I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.

Dog, Stranger, Shots

John Steinbeck (1994). “Of Mice and Men”, p.51, Penguin

All of them had a restlessness in common.

Common, Restlessness

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.51, Penguin

I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.

Ignorance, Pieces, Wonder

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.73, Penguin

Such is the prestige of the Nobel Award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practised it through the ages.

Grateful, Pride, Men

John Steinbeck (2002). “America and Americans, and Selected Nonfiction”, Viking Press

Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang. He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them. He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar. His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it. This is a dog of peace and tranquility.

Friendship, Dog, Humor

John Steinbeck (2007). “Travels with Charley and Later Novels, 1947-1962”

Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't no good, 'cause his little piece of a soul wasn't no good 'less it was with the rest, an' was whole.

Wrath, Soul, Pieces

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.338, Hamilton Books

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.

Sorry, Fighting, Men

John Steinbeck (2001). “Novels, 1942-1952”

With knowledge there is no hope,... without hope I would sit motionless, rusting like unused armor.

Armor, No Hope, Without Hope

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.105, Penguin

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better.

Time, Men, Bridges

John Steinbeck (1966). “Travels with Charley”

A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.

Texas, Texan, Foreigners

John Steinbeck (2012). “Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.255, Penguin

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

Song, Eye, Dark

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.106, Penguin

Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.

Real, Nice, Smart

John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.20, Hamilton Books

You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

Weed, Matter, Grows

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.189, Penguin

Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.

Cities, Paris, San Francisco

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

Women, Wife, Trouble

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.451, Penguin UK

Niagara Falls is very nice. I'm very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.

Travel, Nice, Fall

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.51, Penguin

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

Wrath, Years, Preparation

John Steinbeck (2006). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.38, Penguin

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