Quotes About Struggle

All this is a preface to the fear and uncertainties which clamber over a man so that in his silly work he thinks he must be crazy because he is so alone.

When shoes and clothes and food, when hope is gone we'll all have the rifle.

Now what the hell do you suppose is eatin' them two guys?

Whenever they's a fight so hungry hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there.

Here you play in the street, little chicken. Some day an automobile will run over you; and if it kills you, that will be the best thing that can happen. It may only break your leg or your wing. Then all of your life you will drag along in misery. Life is too hard for you, little bird.

In the souls of the people The Grapes of Wrath are Filling and Growing Heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. Happy 112th Birthday John Steinbeck.

I don't mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don't want to get nibbled to death. There's a difference.

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

I am grieved at what you tell me, said Pellinore, but I believe that God can change destiny. I must have faith in that.

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.

I can just see it all over again. You'll stay around a a year or so and then you'll get restless and you'll make me restless. We'll get mad at each other and then we'll get polite to each other-and that's worse. Then we'll blow up and you'll go away again, and then you'll come back and we'll do it all over again. Adam asked, Don't you want me to stay? Hell yes, said Charles. I miss you when you're not here. But I can see how it's going to be just the same.

I'm learnin' one thing good," she said. "Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.

The frantic summer fishermen who pay a price and glut the decks with fish in the afternoon wonder vaguely what to do with them, sacks and baskets and mountains of porgies and blows and blackfish, sea robins, and even slender dogfish, all to be torn up greedily, to die, and to be thrown back for the waiting gulls. The gulls swarm and wait, knowing the summer fisherman will sicken of their plenty. Who wants to clean and scale a sack of fish? It's harder to give away fish than it is to catch them.

Feed a man, cloth him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.

I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are 'it' all their lives - hopelessly 'it.

Man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote about. - in a letter to George Albee

Flies conquer the flypaper.

There's so much talk about justice, injustice, conquest. Our people are invaded, but I don't think they're conquered.

But us, we got a job to do, and there's a thousand ways, and we don't know which one to take. And if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks that don't know which way to turn.

The dark swallowed him, but his dragging footsteps could be heard a long time after he had gone, footsteps along the road; and a car came by on the highway, and its lights showed the ragged man shuffling along the road, his head hanging down and his hands in the black coat pockets.

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.

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.

You what. Curley's like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He's alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he's mad at 'em because he ain't a big guy. You seen little guys like that, ain't you? Always scrappy?

Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure.