John Steinbeck: Trending quotes (page 2)
John Steinbeck trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Variant: My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible.
Source: East of Eden
Variant: What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
Source: Of Mice and Men
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
Source: The Grapes of Wrath
“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
Source: East of Eden
Interview with Robert van Gelder (April 1947), as quoted in John Steinbeck : A Biography (1994) by Jay Parini
Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Context: In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
Source: East of Eden
“To be alive at all is to have scars.”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter VI
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter
“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”
Source: East of Eden
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter III
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, 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.
Context: In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, 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.