Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

353. “Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

355. “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

356. “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

357. “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

358. “I hope you know what you’re doing when you issue me a license to talk. I’ve heard two ways of looking at it. One says the silent man is the wise man and the other that a man without words is a man without thought. Naturally I favor the second.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

360. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

362. “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

363. “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

364. “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

365. “The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.”

— John Steinbeck

366. “Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.”

— John Steinbeck

367. “Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.”

— John Steinbeck

368. “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

369. “And her joy was nearly like sorrow.”

— John Steinbeck

370. “For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.”

— John Steinbeck

371. “I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

373. “I was mean life a wolf. Now i’m mean like a weasel. When you’re huntin’ somepin you’re a hunter, an’ you’re strong. Can’t nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted – that’s different. Somepin happens to you. You ain’t strong; maybe you’re fierce, but you ain’t strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain’t no hunter no more.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

375. “These too are of a burning color – not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.”

— John Steinbeck

376. “But to find where you are going, you must know where you are, and I didn’t.”

— John Steinbeck

377. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

379. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

381. “A fallow field is a sin.”

— John Steinbeck

382. “So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.”

— John Steinbeck

383. “This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.”

— John Steinbeck

384. “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

385. “To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.”

— John Steinbeck

386. “He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.”

— John Steinbeck

387. “To hell with that rotten century! Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It’s a fair thing ahead. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years – why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy.”

— John Steinbeck

388. “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

389. “Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.”

— John Steinbeck

390. “I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”

— John Steinbeck

391. “The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.”

— John Steinbeck

392. “And of course they were descended from the ancient kings of Ireland, as every Irishman is.”

— John Steinbeck

393. “People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”

— John Steinbeck

394. “I climb fences when i got fences to climb.”

— John Steinbeck

395. “For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism – either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.”

— John Steinbeck

396. “You ain’t worth a greased lack pin to ram you into hell.”

— John Steinbeck

397. “It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.”

— John Steinbeck

398. “The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.”

— John Steinbeck

399. “Sure, cried the tenant men, but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it.”

— John Steinbeck

400. “Her dark eyes made little reflected stars. She was looking at him as she was always looking.”

— John Steinbeck