Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

406. “It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

408. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

410. “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

411. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

413. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

415. “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

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

419. “Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.”

— John Steinbeck

420. “Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.”

— John Steinbeck

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

426. “He was born in fury and he lived in lightning.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

429. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

432. “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

433. “Maybe – maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure – never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself?”

— John Steinbeck

434. “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

435. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

438. “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

439. “Once Adam had remarked on the quiet splendor of Lee’s clothes, and Lee had grinned at him. “I have to do it,” he said. “One must be very rich to dress as badly as you do. The poor are forced to dress well.”

— John Steinbeck

440. “Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.”

— John Steinbeck

441. “I see hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hundreds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out there. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody never gets no land. It’s just in their head.”

— John Steinbeck

442. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

444. “Difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I.”

— John Steinbeck

445. “The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

448. “We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck