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John Steinbeck - From the Accidents category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Activity category:
Intention, good or bad, is not enough. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Advice category:
No one wants advice – only corroboration. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Advice category:
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Blocks category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Books category:
I guess there are never enough books. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Boredom category:
I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Business category:
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Challenge category:
We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Change category:
Change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Children category:
- East of Eden...
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children... (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Choices category:
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Contentment category:
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Critics category:
Time is the only critic without ambition. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Difficulty category:
Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Discipline category:
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Drunkenness category:
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Exploration category:
This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Fear category:
For many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Freedom category:
This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Greatness category:
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Greatness category:
- East of Eden...
All great and precious things are lonely. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Growth category:
Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Guilt category:
I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier? (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Humanity category:
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Ideas category:
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Imagination category:
- East of Eden...
My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Individuality category:
This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Insecurity category:
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Journey category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Life category:
To be alive at all is to have scars. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Light category:
- The Winter of Our Discontent...
It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Loneliness category:
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Love category:
Some men hunger so much for love that they lose everything that is loveable about them. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Money category:
Anything that just costs money is cheap. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Morality category:
It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Pets category:
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Photography category:
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Potential category:
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Power category:
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Profession category:
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Renewal category:
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Routine category:
It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Rules category:
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? (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Senses category:
Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Sleep category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Standards category:
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Suffering category:
One can find so many pains when the rain is falling. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Teaching category:
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Universe category:
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.' (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Words category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
John Steinbeck - From the Writing category:
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. (John Steinbeck)
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