John Steinbeck quotes - page 5

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing. (John Steinbeck)
Fear the day when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, distinctive in the universe.
John Steinbeck
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
John Steinbeck
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
John Steinbeck
These too are of a burning color--not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.
John Steinbeck
Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.
John Steinbeck
For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
John Steinbeck
Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.
John Steinbeck
If you want to keep a friend, never test him.
John Steinbeck
A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.
John Steinbeck
Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys? (John Steinbeck)
Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.
John Steinbeck
You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.
John Steinbeck
At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.
John Steinbeck
He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
John Steinbeck
Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.
John Steinbeck
Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
John Steinbeck
Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.
John Steinbeck
Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
John Steinbeck
It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.
John Steinbeck
To the stars, on the wings of a pig. (John Steinbeck)
When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.
John Steinbeck
The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.
John Steinbeck
You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.
John Steinbeck
For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.
John Steinbeck