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775dbbb
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Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..
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parenting
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John Steinbeck |
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3ba509f
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it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
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John Steinbeck |
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83574e9
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You know how advice is - you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.
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John Steinbeck |
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306cd02
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It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
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John Steinbeck |
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73cca32
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I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
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John Steinbeck |
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afe0900
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I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
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John Steinbeck |
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b559551
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Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
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John Steinbeck |
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0522e3f
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You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff
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John Steinbeck |
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015d56f
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The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we." --
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John Steinbeck |
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9c1b69e
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The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."
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John Steinbeck |
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6c1e688
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Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans
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John Steinbeck |
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c475e15
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and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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John Steinbeck |
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dfbb0ca
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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.
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John Steinbeck |
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f7648d7
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No one who is young is ever going to be old.
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John Steinbeck |
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0535913
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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.
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virtue
honor
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John Steinbeck |
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2fb38ae
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A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
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marriage
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John Steinbeck |
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526c134
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I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.
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John Steinbeck |
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93f6d4d
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Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul? Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who lose..
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John Steinbeck |
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b915429
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And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
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John Steinbeck |
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87c53d1
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His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
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John Steinbeck |
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29bdc95
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Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
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sleep
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John Steinbeck |
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b68fad9
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I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.
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travel
perceptive
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John Steinbeck |
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b19cffc
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I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous ..
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texas
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John Steinbeck |
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484d362
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Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
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John Steinbeck |
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72c4859
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Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy ..
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John Steinbeck |
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d76e5d1
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He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.
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John Steinbeck |
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a874bcb
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Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em.
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John Steinbeck |
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12fee2f
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Intention, good or bad, is not enough.
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John Steinbeck |
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1464ac5
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Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
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humanity
life
inspirational
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John Steinbeck |
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5ab2ee7
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Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
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John Steinbeck |
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55cbec3
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When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping...
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John Steinbeck |
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349cbaa
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Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
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man
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John Steinbeck |
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5bbe9fd
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A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.
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sunset
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John Steinbeck |
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abd57bd
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Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head.
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heaven
land
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John Steinbeck |
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baebf1a
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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."
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time
forget
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John Steinbeck |
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f6d6443
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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.
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John Steinbeck |
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d886ed4
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When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.
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John Steinbeck |
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6589a3b
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So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
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John Steinbeck |
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918ea28
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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have live..
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John Steinbeck |
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0f27b73
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Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
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John Steinbeck |
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016d166
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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 try..
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John Steinbeck |
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9c41e16
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I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.
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John Steinbeck |
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c2b5dfc
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There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.
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steinbeck
favorite
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John Steinbeck |
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a480e7c
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She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that i..
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women
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John Steinbeck |