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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 7

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

No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.

No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.

Colony, Understood, Comprehending

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.

Hate, Men, Knowing

Journal entry in 1938. Introduction by Susan Shillinglaw to "Of Mice and Men", p. VII, 1994.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

Travel, Fire, Color

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.39, Penguin

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

Interesting, Lasts, Stories

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.237, Penguin

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

Strength, Wrath, Sound

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.191, Hamilton Books

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

Writing, Ideas, Abandon

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

Memories, Home, Good Memories

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.163, Penguin

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.

Beautiful, Teacher, Art

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Stupid, Writing, Discipline

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.729, Penguin UK

Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.

Mean, Fighting, Men

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.40, Penguin

It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.

Night, Pearls, Hours

John Steinbeck (1993). “Cannery Row”, p.57, Penguin

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.

Nature, Garden, Earth

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

Sound, Movement, One Tree Hill Love

John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.44, Hamilton Books

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

Sweet, Farewell, Saying Goodbye

Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him.

Business, Men, Clothes

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.64, Penguin

Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.

Mistake, Made, Should

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.36, Penguin

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

Writing, Stories, Crafts

I guess there are never enough books.

Book, Writing, Enough

John Steinbeck (2001). “The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights”, p.304, Penguin UK

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Inspirational, Travel, Struggle

People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.

Responsibility, People, Needs

The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.

Lines, Hunger, Great Company

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.228, Hamilton Books

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that 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.

Eden, Evil, Vices

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

I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.

Dog, Men, Years

There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.

Texas, Confusion, Prejudice

I've always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.

Taken, Hangover, Punishment

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