Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.”

— John Steinbeck

202. “Oh, the strawberries don’t taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!”

— John Steinbeck

203. “Perhaps it takes courage to raise children...”

— John Steinbeck

204. “I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine-print men. There’s nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.”

— John Steinbeck

205. “A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.”

— John Steinbeck

206. “Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make.”

— John Steinbeck

207. “The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.”

— John Steinbeck

208. “Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers.”

— John Steinbeck

209. “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

210. “Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.”

— John Steinbeck

211. “Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans.”

— John Steinbeck

212. “A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man:.”

— John Steinbeck

213. “Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.”

— John Steinbeck

214. “You’re buying years of work, toil in the sun; you’re buying a sorrow that can’t talk.”

— John Steinbeck

215. “The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.”

— John Steinbeck

216. “A fallow field is a sin.”

— John Steinbeck

217. “I’ve always seen you, angel. From the moment you found me, I’ve seen nothing but you.”

— John Steinbeck

218. “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.”

— John Steinbeck

219. “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other.”

— John Steinbeck

220. “The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.”

— John Steinbeck

221. “Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.”

— John Steinbeck

222. “I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

223. “There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.”

— John Steinbeck

224. “Saints can spring from any soil.”

— John Steinbeck

225. “When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Country Quotes

226. “The new migrants from the dust bowl are here to stay. They are the vest American stock, intelligent, resourceful; and, if given a chance, socially responsible. To attempt to force them into a peonage of starvation and intimidated despair will be unsuccessful. They can be citizens of the highest type, or they can be an army driven by suffering to take what they need. On their future treatment will depend the course they will be force to take.”

— John Steinbeck

227. “Niagara Falls is very nice. I’m very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.”

— John Steinbeck

228. “But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there.”

— John Steinbeck

229. “It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times.”

— John Steinbeck

230. “There’s nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.”

— John Steinbeck

231. “Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.”

— John Steinbeck

232. “When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction – and that was conversation.”

— John Steinbeck

233. “We have to make a mark, even if it’s only a scribble.”

— John Steinbeck

234. “Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.”

— John Steinbeck

235. “Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.”

— John Steinbeck

236. “The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.”

— John Steinbeck

237. “And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

— John Steinbeck

238. “I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.” “You can’t make a race horse of a pig.” “No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”

— John Steinbeck

239. “Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.”

— John Steinbeck

240. “I need a dog pretty badly. I dreamed of dogs last night. They sat in a circle and looked at me and I wanted all of them.”

— John Steinbeck

241. “You’ve seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it’s an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”

— John Steinbeck

242. “When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.”

— John Steinbeck

243. “Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn’t do anything about it.”

— John Steinbeck

244. “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”

— John Steinbeck

245. “The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.”

— John Steinbeck

246. “The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb.”

— John Steinbeck

247. “I guess I’m trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”

— John Steinbeck

248. “It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

— John Steinbeck

249. “The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”

— John Steinbeck

250. “When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he’s gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.”

— John Steinbeck