John Steinbeck Quotes (251 Quotes)

Courage and fear were one thing too.

I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..

The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore.

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.

He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.

The land is so much more than its analysis.

She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done. But the remedy lacked his authority because it was simple and didn't cost anything.

I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.

Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.

Dessie's friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad.

Let's get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let's close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life.

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.

The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up.

A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

The last clear definite function of men-muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need-this is man.

The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.

I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical

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

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.

Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil. And this was a shame, for Samuel was a laughing man, but I guess Samuel was wide open to the devil. His wife protected him whenever she could.

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.

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.

I nearly always write just as I nearly always breathe. - John Steinbeck

The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

They were students of the expressions of young women as they went in to confession, and they saw them as they came out and read the nature of the sin.

I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.

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.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.

Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight - the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards

Then there were harebells, tiny lanterns, cream white and almost sinful looking, and these were so rare and magical that a child, finding one, felt singled out and special all day long.

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.

I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.

Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.

At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.

If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. i'll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain.... If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.

This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.

When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.

I.çimden eve gitmek istiyorum, dedim..

There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.