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John Steinbeck Quotes

Total quotes: 58
“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: Routine, Change, Hate
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: Women, Men, Love, strength
“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, Travels Withou
Tagged: Nature, Montana, States, Love, In Love With Places
“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter Of Our Discontent
Tagged: June, Summer, Exploding, Summer Feels
“Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: opportunities, chances, Life
“Lee Chong’s grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply.”
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row: (Centennial Edition)
Tagged: first lines of books, California, food, Monterey County
“A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.”
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: Friendship, Lonely, humanity
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: Sin, Virtue, humanity, Evil
“The quality of owning freezes you forever in 'I,' and cuts you off forever from the 'we'”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: Possession, Selfish, individuals, Teams
“It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: Angels, devil, Good, Evil
“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, The Pearl
Tagged: humanity, skills, Abilities
“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, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Tagged: Virtue, Honesty, Attention
“It's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world. It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: Love, Violence, Hate
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Grief, Loss
“It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary”
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row: (Centennial Edition)
Tagged: kindness, Friendship, Suicide, Death
“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it.”
— John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down
Tagged: Choices, Living, Death
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Tagged: Marriage, Dating
“Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.”
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: kindness, Compassion, Intelligence
“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: Past, Memories, Time
“Fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: Death, Sacrifice, Suffering, Fear
“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: humanity, Growth, accomplishments
“It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.”
— John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Tagged: Goals, God, desires
“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, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Past, present, Future, Time
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter Of Our Discontent
Tagged: Grief, Grieving, Loss, Darkness, Light
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Tagged: Winter, Summer, Beauty In Contrasts
“A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.”
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: first lines of books, California, Monterey County
“You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don't know what he looks like.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: God, Religion, Beliefs
“The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.”
— John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Tagged: Murder, Death, Healing
“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: humanity, differences, similarities
“You know how advice is - you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.”
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row: (Centennial Edition)
Tagged: Advice, Opinions, agreement
“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Money, rich, poor
“Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: Love, Doubts, Dating
“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, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: moment, Time, Stop, mindful
“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.”
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: weird loving friendship, look after you, Connection, Understanding, Care, World, Life
“It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: banks, Money, finances
“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.”
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Dreams, Goals, Fear
“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Tagged: romance, Reality, Love
“Up ahead they's a thousand lives we might live, but when it comes it'll only be one.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Tagged: Choices, Life, opportunities
“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Tagged: beauty, Truth, Lies
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Tagged: Life, Scared, Relationships
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