John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 53 | Just Great DataBase

No one could call him a liar. And this was mainly because the lie was in his head, and any truth coming from his mouth carried the color of the lie.

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Let any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.

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His mind grinned inward at itself.

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

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I don’t want advice. Nobody does. It’s a giver’s present.

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Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

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

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They reminded him of something—what was it?—some memory, some picture. He strove to find it and then it came of itself.It rose out of the years complete with all its colours and its cries, its crowded feelings.

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It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more,

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A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.

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Will you have a touch of ng-ka-py?You mean the drink that tastes of good rotten apples?Yes. I can talk better with it.Maybe I can listen better, said Samuel.

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It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him.

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The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

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В истината има повече красота, дори когато истината е отвратителна. Разказвачите на приказки пред градските порти изопачават живота така, че на мързеливите , глупавите и слабите да им се вижда прекрасен, а това само задълбочава техните недъзи , без да ги учи на нищо , без да ги лекува , без да извисява душите им..

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The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil. Naturally

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Most children abhor difference. They want to look, talk, dress, and act exactly like all of the others. If the style of dress is an absurdity, it is pain and sorrow to a child not to wear that absurdity. If necklaces of pork chops were accepted, it would be a sad child who could not wear pork chops. And this slavishness to the group normally extends into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. It is a protective coloration children utilize for their safety.

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He was born in fury and he lived in lightning.

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we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins.

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in strange and beautiful wares. It sells the lovely animals of the sea, the sponges, tunicates, anemones, the stars and buttlestars, and sun stars, the bivalves, barnacles, the worms and shells, the fabulous and multiform little brothers, the living moving flowers of the sea, nudibranchs and tectibranchs, the spiked and nobbed and needly urchins,

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If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.

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