John Steinbeck idézet oldal 12

„Rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor a bombák már nem hullanak, de a bombavetők még élnek, mert minden bomba annak a bizonysága, hogy a szellem még nem halt meg. Rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor megszűnnek a sztrájkok, de élnek még a nagybirtokosok, mert minden levert kis sztrájk is bizonyítéka annak, hogy a lépés megtörtént. És rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor az ember nem akar szenvedni és meghalni egy gondolatért, mert ez az egyetlen tulajdonság különbözteti meg az embert minden mástól a világegyetemben.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Ha neki egymillió hold kell, hogy gazdagnak érezze magát, az bizonyára azért van, mert belül rettentően szegénynek érzi magát; ha pedig belül szegény, millió holdtól sem fogja magát gazdagnak érezni, s talán azért csalódott, mert ezt az érzést semmi sem szerezheti meg neki.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„A bérlő elgondolkozott: Furcsa dolog ez. Ha valakinek van egy kis birtoka, az a birtok ő maga, hozzá tartozik, olyan, mint ő. Ha csak olyan birtoka van, hogy járhat rajta, művelheti, szomorkodhatik, ha rossz a termés, örülhet az esőnek, akkor az a birtok ő maga, s maga is megnövekszik valahogy, amiért a birtok az övé. Még ha sikertelenül gazdálkodik, akkor is megnöveli a birtoka. Ez így van.
A bérlő tovább gondolkozott: De ha olyan birtoka van az embernek, amit nem lát, vagy nem ér rá, hogy a maga kezével művelje, vagy nem lehet ott, hogy járjon rajta, hát akkor a birtok az úr. Az ember nem teheti azt, amit akar, nem gondolhatja azt, amit akar. A birtok az úr, erősebb a gazdájánál. S a gazda kisebb lesz, nem nagyobb. Csak a birtok a nagy, ő pedig szolgája a birtokának. Ez is így van.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Bármi, ami csak pénzbe kerül, olcsó.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Talán mindenki ebben az egész átkozott világban fél egymástol.”

„Az igazságban több szépség van, még ha félelmetes szépség is.”

„A hatalom nem korrupt. A félelem az... a hatalom elvesztésétől való félelem.”

„Az ötletek olyanok, mint a nyulak. Szerzel egy párat, megtanulod kezelni őket, és hamarosan lesz belőlük egy tucat.”

„És a kis sikoltozó tény, amely az egész történelem során hangzik: Az elnyomás csak arra jó, hogy megerősítse és keményebbé gyúrja az elnyomottakat.”

„És most, hogy nem kell tökéletesnek lenned, jó is lehetsz.”

„Úgy gondolom, hogy egy erős nő erősebb lehet, mint egy férfi, különösen, ha véletlenül szerelem van a szívében. Úgy gondolom, hogy egy szerető nő elpusztíthatatlan.”

„Büszke vagy a fájdalmadra? Nagynak és tragikusnak tűnsz tőled? Nos, gondold át. Lehet, hogy csak a nagy színpadon játszol egy szerepet és magad vagy a közönség.”

„Számomra úgy tűnik, hogy ha neked vagy nekem kétféle gondolkodás vagy cselekvés közül kell választanunk, emlékeznünk kell a halálunkra és meg kell próbálnunk úgy élni, hogy halálunk ne okozzon örömet a világnak.”

„Gyakori tapasztalat, hogy egy probléma, amely nehéznek tűnik éjjel, reggelre megoldódik, miután az alvás bizottsága dolgozott rajta.”

„Az, hogy egyáltalán életben vagyunk, azt jelenti, hogy vannak sebhelyeink.”

„Egy szomorú lélek gyorsabban, sokkal gyorsabban megölhet, mint egy baktérium.”

„Elveszettnek születtem, és nem örülök, ha megtalálnak.”

„Ha megtanulnánk szeretni magunkat, akár csak egy kicsit is, talán a kegyetlenségünk és a dühünk is feloldódna.”

„Ahogy az néha megtörténik, egy pillanat megállapodott és lebegett, és sokkal tovább maradt, mint egy pillanat. És a hangok megálltak, és a mozgás is megállt egy pillanatnál sokkal, de sokkal többre.”

“Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.”

John Steinbeck: Idézetek angolul

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. [Opening sentence. ]”

Pt. 3
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.”

John Steinbeck könyv Cannery Row

Cannery Row (1945)

“Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.”

John Steinbeck könyv Burning Bright

Friend Ed to Joe Saul in Act Three, Scene I: The Sea
Burning Bright (1950)

“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIII

“Strength and success— they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.”

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIII

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

"...like captured fireflies" (1955); also published in America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (2003), p. 142

“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time — he can never return to simplicity.”

New York Times (2 June 1969)

“The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.”

John Steinbeck könyv Sweet Thursday

Forrás: Sweet Thursday (1954), Ch. 36

“If lowborn men could stand up to those born to rule, religion, government, the whole world would fall to pieces…[Merlin replies]…So it would; so it will … then the pieces will be put together again by such as destroyed it.”

“In Awe of Words,” The Exonian, 75th anniversary edition, Exeter University (1930)

“Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

“I can remember the horror which came over my parents when they became convinced that it was so with me [that I wanted to be a writer]—and properly so. What you have and they had to look forward to is life made intolerable by a mean, cantankerous, opinionated, moody, quarrelsome, unreasonable, nervous, flighty, irresponsible son. You will get no loyalty, little consideration and desperately little attention from him. In fact you will want to kill him. I'm sure my father and mother often must have considered poisoning me.”

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.”

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (1969)

“For a while I was a vicious fighter but it wasn't to win. It was to get it over and get the hell out of there. And I never would have done it at all if other people hadn't put me in the ring. The only private fights I ever had were those I couldn't get away from.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Forrás: Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 4, p. 75

“The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.”

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (1969)

“A man is a lonely thing.”

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“This is the law. The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplementary.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

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

“If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.”

King Arthur and his Noble Knights (1976)

“Can you disbelieve in something you don't know about?[…] It isn't that I don't believe but that I don't know.”

“I don't anticipate trouble and so I anticipate trouble.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter V

“I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Short Reign of Pippin IV

The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)

“It is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people — judged, that is, by American country-club standards.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Short Reign of Pippin IV

The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)

“The things everyone knows are most likely to be wrong.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Short Reign of Pippin IV

The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)

“Most people live in a half-dream all their lives and call it reality.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIX

“Writers are a sorry lot. The best you can say of them is that they are better than actors and that's not much.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis (25 July 1959)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

“An artist should be open on all sides to every kind of light and darkness.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Appendix, letter to Chase Horton (8 June 1959)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

“One of the greatest errors in the reconstruction of another era lies in our tendency to think of them as being like ourselves in feeling and attitudes. Actually, without considerable study on the part of a present-day man — if he were confronted by a fifteenth-century man — there would be no possible communication. I think it is possible through knowledge and discipline for a modern man to understand, and, to a certain extent, live into a fifteenth-century mind, but the reverse would be completely impossible.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton (20 April 1959)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

“In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton (14 March 1958)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

“Some people there are who, being grown, forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child. An adult is rarely successful in the undertaking — the reduction of experience to a set of symbols. For a thousand thousand years these humans have existed and they have only learned this trick — this magic — in the final ten thousand of the thousand thousand.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Merlin to King Arthur in "The Death of Merlin"
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)