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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 9

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

People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

Dream, People, Convince

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.224, Penguin

A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.

Feet, Answers, Travels With Charley

John Steinbeck (2012). “Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.293, Penguin

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

Grateful, Pride, Lions

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.146, Penguin

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.

Children, Knowledge, Science

John Steinbeck (1943). “Steinbeck”

So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.

Morning, Eye, Different

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.47, Penguin

In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb VACILAR... It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.

Mean, Doe, Verbs

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

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

Stars, Loneliness, Teaching

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.441, Penguin

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

Life, Integrity, Character

John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.

People, Passing Away, Doe

John Steinbeck (1993). “Cannery Row”, p.92, Penguin

Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.

War, Fighting, Winning

John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.344, Penguin

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

Memories, Years, People

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.11, Penguin

Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.

Men, Difficulty, Whole

A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.

Lonely, Nuts, Differences

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

There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.

Strong, People, Sorrow

John Steinbeck (1995). “To a God Unknown”, p.58, Penguin

But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

Boys, People, Rejection

John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

Wife, Faithful, Attention

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.103, Penguin

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

Dirty, Writing, Boys

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Pastures of Heaven”, p.59, Penguin

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

Angel, Son, Men

John Steinbeck (1993). “Cannery Row”, p.9, Penguin

There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.

Men, Order, Perfect

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.213, Penguin

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

Liars, Lying, Loss

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.67, Penguin

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed

Healing, Needs, Literature

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.146, Penguin

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.

Love, Mother, Hate

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.116, Penguin

We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.

Care, Don't Care, Knows

John Steinbeck (1994). “Of Mice and Men”, p.61, Penguin

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Pain, Rain, Fall

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.1186, Penguin UK

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.

Gauges, Mass, Register

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.90, Penguin

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