Search quotes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ▲ ▼

Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
45bc216	The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.		politics	John Steinbeck
63fa512	You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.			John Steinbeck
3e284e3	Dear Lord,' he said. 'let me be like Aron. Don't make me mean. I don't want to be. If you will let everybody like me, why, I'll give you anything in the world, and if I haven't got it, why, I'll go for to get it. I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be lonely. For Jesus' sake, Amen.			John Steinbeck
da6beb7	My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby...I am very fortunate in having a wife who likes being a woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies.			John Steinbeck
08545e0	I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical			John Steinbeck
0def37b	Lennie rolled off the bunk and stood up, and the two of them started for the door. Just as they reached it, Curley bounced in. "You seen a girl around here?" he demanded angrily. George said coldly, "'Bout half an hour ago maybe." "Well, what the hell was she doin'?" George stood still, watching the angry little man. He said insultingly, "She said--she was lookin' for you." Curley seemed really to see George for the first time. His eyes fla..			John Steinbeck
f105e83	There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.			John Steinbeck
6f0ea24	What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals?Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped,, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come to bad ends, blot-on-the town-thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote..			John Steinbeck
ddf070f	I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone recieved ..		integrity man wealth east-vs-west lee-atwater narcissism-epidemic salvation-from-jesus salvation-in-death sin-and-salvation sociopaths-and-psychopaths the-wealthy the-devil sociopathy sinners the-rich occupy-wall-street sociopaths wealth-and-virtues steve-jobs salvation narcissism sin	John Steinbeck
7cfd20c	Tell 'em to God. Don' go burdenin' other people with your sins. That ain't decent.		sins	John Steinbeck
17ea9a6	I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man.			John Steinbeck
60f2b66	I seen it over an' over--a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. [...] George can tell you screwy things, and it don't matter. It's just the talking. It's just bein' with another guy. That's all.			John Steinbeck
c8ab4f1	The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.			John Steinbeck
181bff7	A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.			John Steinbeck
794b00c	When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.		travel-writing	John Steinbeck
a43c2cc	Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.			John Steinbeck
39f5bca	All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.			John Steinbeck
37f86d8	Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.			John Steinbeck
449e5c4	What pillow can one have like a good conscience?		sleep pillow	John Steinbeck
1d0eea5	That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.		lack-of-judgement judgement	John Steinbeck
41c7051	We do know that we are cheated from birth to the overcharge on our coffins.		death cheating coffin	John Steinbeck
b2d5d69	To the stars, on the wings of a pig.			John Steinbeck
f8eafb1	Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose ..			John Steinbeck
8bfb193	Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the s..			John Steinbeck
664d3ef	When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco "the City". Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City, and so does everyone else who has ever associated with it. A strange and exclusive work is "city". Besides San Francisco, only small sections of London and Rome stay in the mind as the City. New Yorkers say they are going to town. Paris has no title but Paris. Mexico City is the Capital.			John Steinbeck
a56d18c	Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.		morality strength success john-steinbeck the-winter-of-our-discontent punishment failure	John Steinbeck
dca2e85	It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.			John Steinbeck
3a33938	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. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for..			John Steinbeck
df9e814	And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'thou mayest'.		man john-steinbeck theology soul	John Steinbeck
992dc5d	And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in between anywhere.			John Steinbeck
82081ba	But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man - he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's us..		money worth the-grapes-of-wrath john-steinbeck value lives	John Steinbeck
8b0fef3	It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.		subconscious-mind	John Steinbeck
23018ac	Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn't last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can't you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors?			John Steinbeck
3303830	You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.			John Steinbeck
4ad531d	The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.			John Steinbeck
1ea92f7	Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?' she asked. 'I don't see how it could be any other way,' said Lee. 'Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.			John Steinbeck
fcbfb9d	You never oughta drink water when it ain't runnin'.			John Steinbeck
cf95095	The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt--and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.		humanity love rejection	John Steinbeck
5ab142b	Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a 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. And now the..			John Steinbeck
619a81a	Dear Pat, You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, 'Why don't you make something for me?' I asked you what you wanted, and you said, 'A box.' 'What for?' 'To put things in.' 'What things?' 'Whatever you have,' you said. Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts--the pleasures of ..			John Steinbeck
4984b17	And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity.			John Steinbeck
ec30c92	Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say.			John Steinbeck
de21035	He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row		john-steinbeck hazel	John Steinbeck
4a4afd7	But you can't start over, Only a baby can start over. You and me, Why, we're all that's been.			John Steinbeck

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ▲ ▼