Quotes from John Steinbeck

Strange things happened to them . . . some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that faith is refired forever.

In strange and beautiful wares. It sells the lovely animals of the sea, the sponges, tunicates, anemones, the stars and buttlestars, and sun stars, the bivalves, barnacles, the worms and shells, the fabulous and multiform little brothers, the living moving flowers of the sea, nudibranchs and tectibranchs, the spiked and nobbed and needly urchins

They had long ago found out that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and they walked into Monterey. In front of an enlistment station they cheered loudly for America and dared Germany to do her worst. They howled menaces at the German Empire until the enlistment sergeant awakened and put on his uniform and came into the street to silence them. He remained to enlist them.

When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you're your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It's worse, but it's much better too.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody

Sometimes I think you realists are the most sentimental people in the world.

Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought? No, she said quickly. No, I ain't, You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of'em, it's too much.

His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: "Timshel!" His eyes closed and he slept.

Love and fighting, and a little wine. Then you are always young, always happy.

What a wonderful thing a woman is. I can admire what they do even if I don't understand why.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces. He was confused now, but Dessie could hold his bit and point him, the way a handler points a thoroughbred at the barrier to show his breeding and his form.

It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

Casy gathered in his canvas sneakers and shoved his bare feet into them. I ain't got your confidence, he said. I'm always scared there's wire or glass under the dust. I don't know nothin' I hate so much as a cut toe.

Things are neither so good nor so bad as they seem to you now

He ain't no cuckoo," said George. "He's dumb as hell, but he ain't crazy. An' I ain't so bright neither, or I wouldn't be buckin' barley for my fifty and found.

Kitaplar bir halta yaramaz. Ä°nsan?n birine ihtiyac? vard?r, birine yak?n olmak ister. Ä°nler gibi devam etti. Kimsesi yoksa delirir insan. Kim olduÄŸu hiç önemli deÄŸildir, yeter ki yan?nda biri olsun. inan?n bana, insan fazla yaln?z kald? m?, hastalan?r.

The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.

What's celebrate? Eddie asked. That's when you can't get no dame, said Mack. I thought it was a kind of a party, said Jones. A silence fell on the room.

The paintings on the wall were largely preoccupied with the amazing heroism of large dogs faced with imperiled children. Nor water nor fire nor earthquake could do in a child so long as a big dog was available.

Virtue is venerable as nothing else in this world is.

Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil.

Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life—so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do. No," he said, "I'm having enjoyment. And I made a promise to myself that I would not consider enjoyment a sin. I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.