John Steinbeck: Thing

John Steinbeck was American writer. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
John Steinbeck: 732   quotes 33   likes

“All great and precious things are lonely.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. III

Reality

“For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. III

Animals

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Deep , Stupidity

“We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things.”

John Steinbeck

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)
Context: We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things.
The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.
Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.
Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope.
So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man — and the Word is with Men.

Life , Death , God , World

“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Life , Hate

“.. it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world… It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Love , World

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Love , World

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter

Gauge , Reading

“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

World

“And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Time , Success

“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 book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People , Loneliness

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

John Steinbeck
Learning , Reading

“He said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. V
Context: 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. Although she might be puzzled by these differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them. Of course she would follow him, there was no question of that. Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino's manness and save them all.

God

“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 book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

World

“It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

God