John Steinbeck Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.

John Steinbeck
But Doc had one mental habit he could not get over. When anyone asked a question, Doc thought he wanted to know the answer.

John Steinbeck
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

John Steinbeck
Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

John Steinbeck
There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.

John Steinbeck
'I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.'

John Steinbeck
Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.

John Steinbeck
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.

John Steinbeck
You must not expect to find that people understand what they do.

John Steinbeck
Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everbody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

John Steinbeck
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

John Steinbeck
Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

John Steinbeck
Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.

John Steinbeck
A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man:

John Steinbeck
But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

John Steinbeck
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

John Steinbeck
Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.

John Steinbeck
But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.

John Steinbeck
One can live in a prefabricated world, smugly and without question, or one can indulge perhaps the greatest human excitement: that of observation to speculation to hypothesis. This is a creative process, probably the highest and most satisfactory we know.

John Steinbeck
The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

John Steinbeck
I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me?

John Steinbeck
He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little Poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.

John Steinbeck
I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.

John Steinbeck
If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble.

John Steinbeck
I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.

John Steinbeck
I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.

John Steinbeck
There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.

John Steinbeck
Knowledge is a sacred thing, not to be questioned or even inspected.

John Steinbeck
What do I want in a doctor? Perhaps more than anything else-a friend with special knowledge.

John Steinbeck
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

John Steinbeck