John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

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.

it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

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.

A man without words is a man without thought.

When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..

It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.

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

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

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

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.

No one who is young is ever going to be old.

and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.