John Steinbeck Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway. You couldn't say you wore a beard because you liked a beard. People didn't like you for telling the truth. You had to say you had a scar so you couldn't shave. Cannery Row

2. A man without words is a man without thought. East of Eden

3. Benar. Kita tak pernah lagi menjumpai kebahagiaan yang setara dengan kebahagiaan masa kanak-kanak kita." Pablo mengangguk sedih. Tortilla Flat

4. 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 Travels with Charley: In Search of America

5. If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an’ maybe he’s disappointed that nothin’ he can do’ll make him feel rich. The Grapes of Wrath

6. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. Travels with Charley: In Search of America

7. Peut-être le savoir est-il trop grand, mais peut-être aussi l'homme devient-il trop petit. Peut-être qu'à force de s'agenouiller devant les atomes il finit par avoir une âme de la taille de ce qu'il adore. Peut-être le spécialiste n'est-il qu'un lâche qui a peur de regarder le monde extérieur à sa petite cage. Pensez à ce qu'il perd, votre spécialiste : le monde entier qui palpite de l'autre côté de sa clôture.

8. Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. East of Eden

9. 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. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. The Winter of Our Discontent

10. There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. East of Eden

11. This is beyond understanding." said the king. "You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?"And Merlin said quietly, "Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

12. I guess we're all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn't explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn't explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. 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. The Winter of Our Discontent

13. I’ve studied and maybe learned how things are, but I’m not even close to why they are. And you must not expect to find that people understand what they do. East of Eden

14. It’s all fine to say, Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change. Cannery Row

15. Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. Don’t you see? he cried. The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. 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.’ Don’t you see?

16. Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?

17. The last clear definite function of man - muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need - this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifring, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. The Grapes of Wrath

18. There are times that one treasures for all one's life, and such times are burned clearly and sharply on the material of total recall. I felt very fortunate that morning. Travels with Charley and Later Novels 1947–1962: The Wayward Bus / Burning Bright / Sweet Thursday / The Winter of Our Discontent / Travels with Charley in Search of America

19. Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all. East of Eden

20. Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra. Tortilla Flat

21. Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice. East of Eden

22. When a child first catches adults out- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgements are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone East of Eden

23. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate. Travels with Charley: In Search of America