Top 697 Quotes & Sayings by John Steinbeck - Page 9

The Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open...Why, that makes a man great...He can choose his course and fight it through and win...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'. ch 24

I have starved and it isn't nearly as bad as is generally supposed. Four days and a half was my longest stretch. Maybe there are pains that come later. Personally I think terror is the painful part of starvation.

I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

... every little boy thinks he invented sin.

When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.

But Doc had one mental habit he could not get over. When anyone asked a question, Doc thought he wanted to know the answer.

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred.

There is comfort in routine.

Saints can spring from any soil.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.

I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the results of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.

The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end.

Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.

Niagara Falls is very nice. I'm very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.

Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?

The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.

I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.

Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.

It is the nature of a person as he/she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.

You never oughta drink water when it ain't runnin'.

The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

One pays for everything, the trick is not to pay too much of anything for anything.

Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to

There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers.

A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.

Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.

With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.

We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.

The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.

For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.

Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now." "Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta.

I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me?

A dog is a bond between strangers.

It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate.

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.

I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.

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.

Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?

I do not find illness an eminence, and I do not understand how people can use it to draw attention to themselves since the attention they draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out.

it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.

I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.

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.

If you want to keep a friend, never test him.