John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 23 | Just Great DataBase

Just come,

and

You never oughta drink water when it ain’t running,

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?

Adam Trask to Cathy: "You know about the ugliness in people. You showed me the pictures. You use all the sad, weak parts of a man, and God knows he has them." ... "But you-yes, that's right- you don't know about the rest. You don't believe I brought you the letter because I don't want your money. You don't believe I love you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures- you don't believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think-more than that, you're sure- that's all there is.'"...I seem to know that there's a part of you missing. Some men can't see the colour green, but they may never know they can't. I think you are only part of a human. I can't do anything about that. ut I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn't see or feel it. That would be horrible.

Evil must constantly re-spawn, 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.

Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home.

I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.

I don’t know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love.

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.

You can’t make a race horse of a pig. No, said Samuel, but you can make a very fast pig.

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.

You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.

And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world in never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory. Then he went out and closed the door gently behind him. Kate sat staring at the door. Her eyes were desolate.

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one.

He thought dawdling, protective thoughts, sitting under the lamp, but he knew that pretty soon hisname would be called and he would have to go up before the bench with himself as judge and his owncrimes as jurors.And his name was called, shrilly in his ears. His mind walked in to face the accusers: Vanity, which charged him with being ill dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love.Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. Be good, be pure, be great, be Tom Hamilton.Tom ignored his father. He said, I’m busy greeting my friends, and he nodded to Discourtesy and Ugliness and Unfilial Conduct and Unkempt Fingernails. Then he started with Vanity again. TheGray One shouldered up in front. It was too late to stall with baby sins. This Gray One was Murder.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?

Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

I eat stories like grapes.