John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 4

I wonder if he had a Cathy and who she was.

This is the greatest mystery of the human mind-the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.

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

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now - look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.

Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.

...and the break would never come as long as fear can turn to wrath.

I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention,help,and conversation is to be lost.A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost

Where the rich lead,the poor will follow, or try to.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - ‘Thou mayest’ - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ - it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

Пойди поищи ее, свободу. Мне один говорил: сколько у тебя есть в кармане, на столько у теб�%

Люди бьют крыльями, точно птицы, залетевшие на чердак. Кончится тем, что поломают они се%

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's
why.