Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “A funeral isn’t for the dead. You’ll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won’t even be there.”

— John Steinbeck

352. “Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine.”

— John Steinbeck

353. “A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Book Quotes

354. “It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.”

— John Steinbeck

355. “All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.”

— John Steinbeck

356. “My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned.”

— John Steinbeck

357. “When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.”

— John Steinbeck

358. “There seemed to be no cure for loneliness save only being alone.”

— John Steinbeck

359. “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

360. “I don’t know what directed his steps toward the Salinas Valley. It was an unlikely place for a man from a green country to come to, but he came about thirty years before the turn of the century and brought with him his tiny Irish wife, a tight hard little woman humorless as a chicken. She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.”

— John Steinbeck

361. “A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin’, an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees somethin’, he don’t know whether it’s right or not. He can’t turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can’t tell. He got nothing to measure by.”

— John Steinbeck

362. “With a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.”

— John Steinbeck

363. “A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.”

— John Steinbeck

364. “A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.”

— John Steinbeck

365. “Everybody wants a little bit of land, not much. Jus’ som’thin’ that was his. Som’thin’ he could live on and there couldn’t nobody throw him off of it.”

— John Steinbeck

366. “No – the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything’s holy – everything, even me.”

— John Steinbeck

367. “I’m back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

369. “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody.”

— John Steinbeck

370. “It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

— John Steinbeck

371. “Yeah,” said George. “I’ll come. But listen, Curley. The poor bastard’s nuts. Don’t shoot ‘im. He di’n’t know what he was doin’.”

— John Steinbeck

372. “For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn’t trust a gentleman’s word.”

— John Steinbeck

373. “And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right – the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.”

— John Steinbeck

374. “The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”

— John Steinbeck

375. “Trouble with mice is you always kill ’em.”

— John Steinbeck

376. “Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.”

— John Steinbeck

377. “A dog is a bond between strangers.”

— John Steinbeck

378. “I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Real Quotes

380. “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

— John Steinbeck

381. “Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody – to be near him.” He whined, “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

— John Steinbeck

382. “There was the hills, an’ there was me, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that one thing was holy.”

— John Steinbeck

383. “And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.”

— John Steinbeck

384. “Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.”

— John Steinbeck

385. “When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”

— John Steinbeck

386. “And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.”

— John Steinbeck

387. “He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row.”

— John Steinbeck

388. “Love and fighting, and a little wine. Then you are always young, always happy.”

— John Steinbeck

389. “Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much.”

— John Steinbeck

390. “Don’t ever ask directions of a Maine native,” I was told. “Why ever not?” “Somehow we think it is funny to misdirect people and we don’t smile when we do it, but we laugh inwardly. It is our nature.” I wonder if that is true. I could never test it, because through my own efforts I am lost most of the time without any help from anyone.”

— John Steinbeck

391. “The bank – the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.”

— John Steinbeck

392. “The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.”

— John Steinbeck

393. “And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.”

— John Steinbeck

394. “Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one. If I go ahead on all of ’em, it’s too much.”

— John Steinbeck

395. “On all levels American society is rigged. I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Country Quotes

396. “The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.”

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Strong Quotes

397. “Lord, how the day passes! It’s like a life – so quickly when we don’t watch it and so slowly when we do.”

— John Steinbeck

398. “He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little Poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.”

— John Steinbeck

399. “She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.”

— John Steinbeck

400. “The people don’t like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.”

— John Steinbeck