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John Steinbeck
204 quotes
“He was a fine steady man, Juan Chicoy, part Mexican and part Irish, perhaps fifty years old, with clear black eyes, a good head of hair, and a dark and handsome face. Mrs Chicoy was insanely in love with him and a little afraid of him too, because he was a man, and there aren't very many of them, as Alice Chicoy had found out. There aren't very many of them in the world, as everyone finds out sooner or later.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips—blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so that a visitor of another species might judge from the preoccupation of artist and audience that the seat of procreation lay in the mammaries.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her body and her mind were sluggish and lazy, and deep down she fought a tired envy of the people who, so she thought, experienced good things while she went through life a gray cloud in a gray room. Having few actual perceptions, she lived by rules. Education is good. Self-control is necessary. Everything in its time and place. Travel is broadening. And it was this last axiom which had forced her finally on the vacation to Mexico.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He didn't believe in psychiatrists, he said. But actually he did believe in them, so much that he was afraid of them.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you argue with a child," she said warmly, "you give a good argument and the child says yah, yah! You understand him and he doesn't listen, so the child wins.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Victor's unfortunate choice it was always to mis-see, to mis-hear, to misjudge. He read softness into her because of the softness of her voice, when she was only remembering. His was the self-centered chaos of childhood. All looks and thoughts, loves and hatreds, were directed at him. Softness was softness towards him, weakness was weakness in the face of his strength. He preheard answers and listened not. He was full-coloured and brilliant—all outside of him was pale.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He brought his malformed wisdom, his pool-hall, locker-room, joke-book wisdom to the front.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mordeen said: "I used to wonder why this love seemed sweeter than I had ever known, better than many people ever know. And then one day the reason came to me. There are very few great Anythings in the world. In work and art and emotion—the great is very rare. And I have one of the great and beautiful. Now say your yah, yah, Victor, like a child unanswerably answering Wisdom. You will have to do that, I think.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His guard was up now and he wasn't listening; he was only angry because here was a world he could not enter and so he had to disbelieve in its existence. He fell back on the world he knew.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is so easy a thing to give—only great men have the courage and courtesy and, yes, the generosity to receive.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world — temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy.[…] Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are no better than the animals; in fact in a lot of ways we aren't as good.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men do change, and 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 (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Woman and women is two different things," said Suzy. "Guy knows all about women, he don't know nothing about a woman.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Doc cried to no one, "Give me a little time! I want to think.[…] Everyone has something. And what has Suzy got? Absolutely nothing in the world but guts. She's taken on an atomic world with a sling-shot, and, by God, she's going to win! If she doesn't win there's no point in living any more. "What do I mean, win?" Doc asked himself. "I know. If you are not defeated, you win”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time — he can never return to simplicity.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people — judged, that is, by American country-club standards.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of a loss of power.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't anticipate trouble and so I anticipate trouble.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the misfortune of men to want to do a thing well, even a thing they do not want to do at all.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are a good man, Sire, and a good man draws women as cheese draws mice.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The one thing our species is helpless against is good fortune. It first puzzles, then frightens, then angers, and finally destroys us.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human fetus is born upside down. But it is not true that a child becomes upright after birth. Observe the feet of children and young people when they are at rest. The feet are nearly always higher than the head, No matter how hard he may try, the growing boy, and particularly girl, cannot keep the feet down. The fetal position is very strong. It takes eighteen to twenty years for the feet finally to accept the ground as their normal home. It is my hypothesis that you can judge maturity exactly by the relationship of the feet to the ground.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I guess I’m trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The incident seemed to prove to me that intentions, good or bad, are not enough.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure is a state of mind. It’s like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you want to keep a friend never test him.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn’t do anything about it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm sorry," Ethan said. "You have taught me something — maybe three things, rabbit footling mine. Three things will never be believed — the true, the probable, and the logical. I know now where to get the money to start my fortune.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place — everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source