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


John Steinbeck

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JOHN STEINBECK Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that ...
JOHN STEINBECK For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be bet...
JOHN STEINBECK Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
JOHN STEINBECK Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?' she asked.
'I d...
JOHN STEINBECK I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.
JOHN STEINBECK To the stars, on the wings of a pig.
JOHN STEINBECK The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and ou...
JOHN STEINBECK The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, dow...
JOHN STEINBECK ...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides whit...
JOHN STEINBECK He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give ...
JOHN STEINBECK No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
JOHN STEINBECK In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and ...
JOHN STEINBECK Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
JOHN STEINBECK You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let your...
JOHN STEINBECK Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls...
JOHN STEINBECK To be alive at all is to have scars.
JOHN STEINBECK If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about ...
JOHN STEINBECK Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't l...
JOHN STEINBECK I was mean life a wolf. Now i'm mean like a weasel. When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an'...
JOHN STEINBECK When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when...
JOHN STEINBECK But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars.” Lee’s eyes shone. “You can never lose that...
JOHN STEINBECK Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are ...
JOHN STEINBECK And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing...
JOHN STEINBECK Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and ...
JOHN STEINBECK Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mi...
JOHN STEINBECK No one who is young is ever going to be old.
JOHN STEINBECK ..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, an...
JOHN STEINBECK It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
JOHN STEINBECK Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
JOHN STEINBECK A man without words is a man without thought.
JOHN STEINBECK When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else...
JOHN STEINBECK But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thin...
JOHN STEINBECK A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
JOHN STEINBECK People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
JOHN STEINBECK