John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 52 | Just Great DataBase

It’s the lie I’m thinking of. It might infect everything. If they ever found out you’d lied to them about this, the true things would suffer. They wouldn’t believe anything then. Yes, I see. But what can I tell them? I couldn’t tell them the whole truth. Maybe you can tell them a part truth, enough so that you won’t suffer if they find out.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie.

Salinas for the alkali which was white as salt.

We learned then that war was not a quick heroic charge but a slow, incredibly complicated matter.

Una ciudad se parece mucho a un animal. Tiene un sistema nervioso, una cabeza, unos hombros y unos pies. Está separada de las otras ciudades, de tal modo que no existen dos idénticas. Y es además un todo emocional.

I guess the difference is that dampness comes down but dankness rises up out of rot and fermentation.

He had said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man.

SOMETIMES, BUT NOT OFTEN, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November. It is so rare that the Journal or the Index or both carry editorials about it. The hills turn to a soft green overnight and the air smells good. Rain at this time is not particularly good in an agricultural sense unless it is going to continue, and this is extremely unusual. More commonly, the dryness comes back and the fuzz of grass withers or a little frost

Sometimes it rose to an aching chord that caught the throat, saying this is the safety, this is warmth, this is the Whole.

as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.

Now Kino lay in the cave entrance, his chin braced on his crossed arms, and he watched the blue shadow of the mountain move out across the brushy desert below until it reached the Gulf, and the long twilight of the shadow was over the land.

Maybe you’ll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup—thin, strong, translucent? He held his cup to the light. All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that—more fire. And then either the slag heap or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection. He drained his cup and he said loudly, Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us—would stop trying?

نحن نعلم أنه يجرى الاحتيال علينا من الولادة ، بصورة لا تطاق ، حتى نوضع في التوابيت

Oh! Alice in Wonderland. You’re too big for that.

Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can’t finally give in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside—neither part of themselves nor yet free. It’s better to fall in with them. They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it.

Come back with your shield or on it.

Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they're becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses--the whole world over his fence.

and the night moved restlessly about the house

Thou mayest rule over sin.

She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it.