John Steinbeck famous quotes

Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
-- John Steinbeck

#Love #Broken Heart #Heartbroken

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
-- John Steinbeck

#Life #Motivational #Positive

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

#Love #Wisdom #Honesty

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
-- John Steinbeck

#Inspiring #Encouragement #I Hate You

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.
-- John Steinbeck

#Fear #Light #Color

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
-- John Steinbeck

#Littles #Clown #Seals

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
-- John Steinbeck

#Loneliness #Soul #Literature

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

#Life #Morning #Sleep

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.
-- John Steinbeck

#I Hate You #Mind #World

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
-- John Steinbeck

#Roots #America #Politics

I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
-- John Steinbeck

#Dog #Men #Years

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

#Marriage #Travel #Adventure

I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
-- John Steinbeck

#Looks #You Got Me

Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.
-- John Steinbeck

#Loneliness #World #Body

Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.
-- John Steinbeck

#Girl #Fighting #Alive

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.
-- John Steinbeck

#Writing #Sight #Mind

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
-- John Steinbeck

#Hate #Government #Long

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

#Inspirational #Education #Teacher

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
-- John Steinbeck

#Summer #Winter #Giving

Do you take pride in your hurt?' Samuel asked. 'Does it make you seem large and tragic? . . . Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience . . . there's all that fallow land, and here beside me is all that fallow man. It seems a waste. And I have a bad feeling about waste because I could never afford it. Is it a good feeling to let your life lie fallow?
-- John Steinbeck

#Hurt #Lying #Pride

The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.
-- John Steinbeck

#Years #People #Dying

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
-- John Steinbeck

#Understanding #Ears #Speech

Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him.
-- John Steinbeck

#Business #Men #Clothes

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?
-- John Steinbeck

#Baby #Eggs #Shapes

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

#Change #Hate #Growth

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
-- John Steinbeck

#Horse #Book #Writing

We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.
-- John Steinbeck

#God #Taken #Responsibility

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
-- John Steinbeck

#Advice #Want #Wanted

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.
-- John Steinbeck

#Beautiful #Love Is #Trying

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.
-- John Steinbeck

#Anger #Littles #Might

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
-- John Steinbeck

#Believe #Dedication #Men

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
-- John Steinbeck

#Pain #Rain #Fall

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

#Grateful #Pride #Lions

I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
-- John Steinbeck

#Life #Weather #Climate

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

#Travel #Struggle #Journey

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
-- John Steinbeck

#Beautiful #Clever #Book

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

#Dog #Eye #Thinking

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
-- John Steinbeck

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Couple

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
-- John Steinbeck

#Football #Team #War

And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
-- John Steinbeck

#Prayer #Past #Men

I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
-- John Steinbeck

#Rip #Rags #Nerves

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

#Fields #Doe #Hunger

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.
-- John Steinbeck

#Romance #Dachshunds #Ridiculous

No one wants advice - only corroboration.
-- John Steinbeck

#Entrepreneur #Advice #Mind Your Own Business

An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.
-- John Steinbeck

#Parent #Answers #Whole Family

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

#Stupid #Writing #Discipline

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
-- John Steinbeck

#People #Like You

The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.
-- John Steinbeck

#Nature #Men #Years

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
-- John Steinbeck

#Men #Mind #Muscles

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.
-- John Steinbeck

#Nature

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.
-- John Steinbeck

#Imagination #One Day #Hell

Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
-- John Steinbeck

#Morning #Golden

We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.
-- John Steinbeck

#Care

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
-- John Steinbeck

#Summer #Memories #Flower

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.
-- John Steinbeck

#Beauty #Truth #Chaos

Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.
-- John Steinbeck

#Book #Mean #Mad

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
-- John Steinbeck

#Mother #Hate #Believe

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.
-- John Steinbeck

#Writing #Thinking #Want

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
-- John Steinbeck

#War #Reality #Romance

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?
-- John Steinbeck

#Honesty #Honestly

To finish is a sadness to a writer - a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
-- John Steinbeck

#Sadness #Writing #Down And

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
-- John Steinbeck

#War #Animal #Men

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
-- John Steinbeck

#Writing #Stories #Crafts

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

#Character #Men #Dust

I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.
-- John Steinbeck

#Montana #Recognition #Admiration

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.
-- John Steinbeck

#Children #Knowledge #Knowing

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
-- John Steinbeck

#Evil #Faces #Vices

I guess there are never enough books.
-- John Steinbeck

#Book #Writing #Enough

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.
-- John Steinbeck

#Eye #Color #Tree

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.
-- John Steinbeck

#Moving #Wind #Stones

And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
-- John Steinbeck

#Women #Equality #Beard

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
-- John Steinbeck

#Travel #Fire #Color

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
-- John Steinbeck

#Wife #Faithful #Attention

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.
-- John Steinbeck

#Morning #Stars #Rushing

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans
-- John Steinbeck

#Boys #Thinking #Texas

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
-- John Steinbeck

#Writing #Telling The Truth #Hardest

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.
-- John Steinbeck

#Children #Men #Scare

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.
-- John Steinbeck

#Loneliness #Animal #Trying

Courage and fear were one thing too.
-- John Steinbeck

#Fear

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

#Helping Others #Men #World

Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.
-- John Steinbeck

#Hate #Heart #Men

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.
-- John Steinbeck

#Moving #Animal #Boys

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry n’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.
-- John Steinbeck

#Kids #Fighting #Mad

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
-- John Steinbeck

#Past #Our Past

We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
-- John Steinbeck

#Struggle #Years

Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
-- John Steinbeck

#Prayer #Fighting #Thrones

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.
-- John Steinbeck

#People #Kind #Praying

Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough
-- John Steinbeck

#New York #Home #Good Enough

Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
-- John Steinbeck

#War #Fighting #Men

Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.
-- John Steinbeck

#Sadness #Men #Mouths

Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
-- John Steinbeck

#Ease #World

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
-- John Steinbeck

#Inspirational #Freedom #Believe

It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
-- John Steinbeck

#Beautiful #Weed #Morning

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
-- John Steinbeck

#Ugly #Condescension

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
-- John Steinbeck

#Stars #Loneliness #Teaching

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.
-- John Steinbeck

#Hate #Men #Knowing

You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff
-- John Steinbeck

#Stuff

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.
-- John Steinbeck

#Sound #Movement #Sometimes

We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
-- John Steinbeck

#Animal #Trying #Lonesome

Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
-- John Steinbeck

#Sadness