John Steinbeck Quotes (251 Quotes)

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.

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.

A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.

A man without words is a man without thought.

Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.

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

Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

Abra was ready ere I called her name. And though I called another, Abra came.

Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom.

All great and precious things are lonely.

For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.

And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.

Hazel grew up - did four years in grammar school, four years in reform school, and didn't learn a thing in either place. Reform schools are supposed to teach viciousness and criminality but Hazel didn't pay enough attention.

He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.

If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

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

It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary

Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.

The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous...but not quite.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

I believe that love cannot be bought except with love

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

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

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

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

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.

I have named the destroyers of nations comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction

I know this -- a man got to do what he got to do.