Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2023 Update)
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401. “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby those fruits may be eaten.”

— John Steinbeck

402. “Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

404. “Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”

— John Steinbeck

405. “Don’t make everyone know about your sadness.”

— John Steinbeck

406. “I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”

— John Steinbeck

407. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

409. “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

410. “If you want to keep a friend, never test him.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

412. “When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something – anything – before it is all gone.”

— John Steinbeck

413. “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

414. “Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.”

— John Steinbeck

415. “We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”

— John Steinbeck

416. “From start to finish I found no strangers. If I had, I might be able to report them more objectively. But these are my people and this my country. If I found matters to criticize and to deplore, they were tendencies equally present in myself.”

— John Steinbeck

417. “It isn’t like the rest of the country – it is like a nation itself – more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York.”

— John Steinbeck

418. “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

419. “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

420. “We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.”

— John Steinbeck

421. “When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco “the City”. Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City, and so does everyone else who has ever associated with it. A strange and exclusive work is “city”. Besides San Francisco, only small sections of London and Rome stay in the mind as the City. New Yorkers say they are going to town. Paris has no title but Paris. Mexico City is the Capital. p197.”

— John Steinbeck

422. “Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.”

— John Steinbeck

423. “Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”

— John Steinbeck

424. “Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.”

— John Steinbeck

425. “Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.”

— John Steinbeck

426. “They’s a time of change, an’ when that comes, dyin’ is a piece of all dyin’, and bearin’ is a piece of all bearin’, an’ bearin’ an’ dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing. An’ then things ain’t lonely any more. An’ then a hurt don’t hurt so bad, ’cause it ain’t a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn. I wisht I could tell you so you’d know, but I can’t.’’ And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her.”

— John Steinbeck

427. “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

428. “The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days.”

— John Steinbeck

429. “The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.”

— John Steinbeck

430. “There was a huge moon over the western mountains, and it made the city seem even more mysterious and old, and the great black castle on the ridge stood out in front of the moon. And if there are ghosts anyplace in the world, they must be here, and if there is a ghost of Queen Tamara, she must have been walking the ridge in the moonlight that night.”

— John Steinbeck

431. “Curley’s wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young. Now her rouged cheeks and reddened lips made her seem alive and sleeping very lightly. The curls, tiny little sausages, were spread on the hay behind her head and her lips were parted.”

— John Steinbeck

432. “A wife is like a children’s movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.”

— John Steinbeck

433. “No one could call him a liar. And this was mainly because the lie was in his head, and any truth coming from his mouth carried the color of the lie.”

— John Steinbeck

434. “For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”

— John Steinbeck

435. “I’ve always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.”

— John Steinbeck

436. “It’s hard to split a man down the middle and always to reach for the same half.”

— John Steinbeck

437. “An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.”

— John Steinbeck

438. “Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try.”

— John Steinbeck

439. “There can’t be any world without Samuel. How could we think about anything without knowing what he thought about it? What would the spring be like, or Christmas, or rain? There couldn’t be a Christmas.”

— John Steinbeck

440. “A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.”

— John Steinbeck

441. “But Doc had one mental habit he could not get over. When anyone asked a question, Doc thought he wanted to know the answer.”

— John Steinbeck

442. “It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane.”

— John Steinbeck

443. “Adam fluttered like a bewildered bee confused by too many flowers.”

— John Steinbeck

444. “He wears a beard and his face is half Christ and half satyr and his face tells the truth.”

— John Steinbeck

445. “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

446. “And her eyes were on the highway, where life whizzed by.”

— John Steinbeck

447. “It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.”

— John Steinbeck

448. “The emotion of nonviolence was building in him until it became a prejudice like any other thought-stultifying prejudice. To inflict any hurt on anything for any purpose became inimical to him. He became obsessed with this emotion, for such it surely was, until it blotted out any possible thinking in its area. But never was there any hint of cowardice in Adam’s army record. Indeed he was commended three times and then decorated for bravery.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

450. “There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.”

— John Steinbeck