Quotes & Sayings About Love John Steinbeck

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. — John Steinbeck

The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself, then the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land. — John Steinbeck

My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible. — John Steinbeck

Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' ... I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' ... I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it. — John Steinbeck

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

I believe that love cannot be bought except with love. — John Steinbeck

I think I love you, Cal." -Abra I'm not good." -Cal Because you're not good." -Abra — John Steinbeck

Dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting - the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will's money, Treason toward his mother's God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. Be good, be pure, be great, — John Steinbeck

Do you know that i paid two dollars for [Doxocology] thirty-three years ago? Everything was wrong with him, hoofs like flapjacks, a hock so thick and short and straight there seems no joint at all. he's hammerheaded and swaybacked. He has a pinched chest and a big behind. He has an iron mouth and he still fights the upper. with a saddle he feels as thought you were riding a sled over a gravel pit. He can't trot and he stumbles over his feet when he walks. I have never in thirty-three years fond one good thing about him. He even has an ugly disposition. He is selfish and quarrelsome and mean and disobedient. to this day I don't dare walk behind him because he will surely take a kick at me. when I feed him mush he tries to bite my hand. And I love him. — John Steinbeck

Tiny emerged on deck some hours later, shaken but smiling. He said that what he had been considering love had turned out to be simple flatulence. He said he wished all his romantic problems could be solved as easily. — John Steinbeck

He moved very quickly to her and put his arms around her. And there was hunger and eagerness in his body and in his face.
"Not angry," he said. "No, not angry. And still, angry."
He stroked her cheek.
"Angry at time when you were away. Angry at time. Irritated with the minutes when you aren't with me."
"I like that," she said. "It's good to be missed. I came back as soon as I could. It's good to be away a little. Then I know how well and strongly I love you."
He strained her tight to him.
"I get frightened," he said. "My mind plays games, it whispers that you don't exist, it sneers that you'd gone away, it whines to me that there's no Mordeen. It's a cruel and mischievous game. — John Steinbeck

I'm glad there's love here. That's all. — John Steinbeck

No gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. — John Steinbeck

Abra looked at his sunny hair, tight-curled now, and at the eyes that seemed so near to tears, and she felt the longing and itching burn in her chest that is the beginning of love. Also, she wanted to touch Aron, and she did. She put her hand on his arm and felt him shiver under her fingers. — John Steinbeck

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. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. — John Steinbeck

[He] fell right into the oldest conviction in the world
that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest. — John Steinbeck

There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold ... Surely Texas is such a place ... — John Steinbeck

Dessie's friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad. — John Steinbeck

Adam Trask to Cathy: "You know about the ugliness in people. You showed me the pictures. You use all the sad, weak parts of a man, and God knows he has them." ... "But you-yes, that's right- you don't know about the rest. You don't believe I brought you the letter because I don't want your money. You don't believe I love you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures- you don't believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think-more than that, you're sure- that's all there is.'
" ... I seem to know that there's a part of you missing. Some men can't see the colour green, but they may never know they can't. I think you are only part of a human. I can't do anything about that. ut I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn't see or feel it. That would be horrible. — John Steinbeck

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. KNOWING A MAN WELL NEVER LEADS TO HATE and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. TRY TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER! — John Steinbeck

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

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing? — John Steinbeck

The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
- Steinbeck Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech — John Steinbeck

Hate cannot live alone. It It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. Joe early developed a gentle protective love for Joe. He comforted and flattered and cherished Joe. He set up walls to save Joe from a hostile world. And Joe gradually became proof against wrong. If Joe got into trouble, it was because the world was in angry conspiracy against him. And if Joe attacked the world, it was revenge and they damn well deserved it - the sons of bitches. Joe lavished every care on his love, and he perfected a lonely set of rules which might have gone like this:
1. Don't believe nobody. The bastards are after you.
2. Keep your mouth shut. Don't keep your neck out.
3. Keep your ears open. When they make a slip, grab on to it and wait.
4. Everybody's a son of a bitch and whatever you do they got it coming. — John Steinbeck

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans. — John Steinbeck

It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him. — John Steinbeck

I knew from combat that casualties are the victims of a process, not of anger nor of hate or cruelty. And I believe that in the moment of acceptance, between winner and loser, between killer and killed, there is love. — John Steinbeck

I wonder if he had a Cathy and who she was. — John Steinbeck

I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. — John Steinbeck

Yes, I'll be glad." And she said suddenly, "There are some times, Joseph, when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow."
He looked quickly at her in astonishment at her statement of his own thought. "How did you think that, dear?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because I was thinking it at that moment - and there are times when the people and the hills and the earth, all, everything except the stars, are one, and the love of them all is strong like a sadness."
"Not the stars, then?"
"No, never the stars. The stars are always strangers - sometimes evil, but always strangers. Smell the sage, Elizabeth. It's good to be getting home. — John Steinbeck

I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some effection, but with Montana it is love. — John Steinbeck

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

Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the name of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead. — John Steinbeck

A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred. — John Steinbeck

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

Our Father who art in nature ... must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. — John Steinbeck

Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, 'You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake.' It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn't forget it ... If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn't known
they might call the police. — John Steinbeck

Some men hunger so much for love that they lose everything that is loveable about them. — John Steinbeck

I love reading. I'm fortunate enough to have signed books by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon. — John Larroquette

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. — John Steinbeck

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love. — John Steinbeck

First - if you are in love - that's a good thing - that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second - There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had. — John Steinbeck

My darling was purring in her sleep, with the archaic smile on her lips, and she had the extra glow of comfort and solace she gets after love, a calm fulfilledness.
I should have been sleepy after wandering around the night before, but I wasn't. I've noticed that I am rarely sleepy if I know I can sleep long in the morning. The red dots were swimming in my eyes, and the street light threw the shadows of naked elm branches on the ceiling, where they made slow and stately cats' cradles because the spring wind was blowing. The window was open halfway and the white curtains swelled and filled like sails on an anchored boat ...
I felt good and fulfilled, too, but whereas Mary dives for sleep, I didn't want to go to sleep. I wanted to go on fully tasting how good I felt. — John Steinbeck

You've never had a quick jump in the hay in your life."
"I could learn, maybe."
"You couldn't fornicate if you wanted to."
"I could try."
"It would take love or hatred to arouse you, and either one would require a slow and stately procedure. — John Steinbeck

Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. — John Steinbeck

Love and fighting, and a little wine. Then you are always young, always happy. — John Steinbeck

Liza hated alcoholic liquors with an iron zeal. Dribking alcohol in any form she regarded as a crime against a properly outraged diety. Not only would she not touch it herself, but she resisted its enjoyment by anyone else. The result naturally was that her husband Samuel and all her children had a good lusty love for a drink. — John Steinbeck

But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn't love him?"
"Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. 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? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe - why, maybe it's a kind of reverse. — John Steinbeck

Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure - never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I — John Steinbeck

Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. — John Steinbeck

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible. — John Steinbeck

I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have against the oppressor and for the oppressed came from [Le Morte d'Arthur] ... It did not seem strange to me that Uther Pendragon wanted the wife of his vassal and took her by trickery. I was not frightened to find that there were evil knights, as well as noble ones. In my own town there were men who wore the clothes of virtue whom I knew to be bad ... If I could not choose my way at the crossroads of love and loyalty, neither could Lancelot. I could understand the darkness of Mordred because he was in me too; and there was some Galahad in me, but perhaps not enough. The Grail feeling was there, however, deep-planted, and perhaps always will be. — John Steinbeck

You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake. — John Steinbeck

If you are in love-that's a good thing-that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. — John Steinbeck

Dear Pat,
You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, 'Why don't you make something for me?'
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, 'A box.'
'What for?'
'To put things in.'
'What things?'
'Whatever you have,' you said.
Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts - the pleasures of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.
John — John Steinbeck

You're not clever. You don't know what you want. You have no proper fierceness. You let other people walk over you. Sometimes I think you're a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. — John Steinbeck

It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. — John Steinbeck

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully. — John Steinbeck

But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him ... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him. — John Steinbeck

I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. — John Steinbeck

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt - and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. — John Steinbeck

He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.
There was a man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, What can we do now? How can we go on without him? — John Steinbeck

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

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the town lets wither a time and die. — John Steinbeck

That man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. — John Steinbeck

Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. — John Steinbeck

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

I'm in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it. — John Steinbeck

Then it is better, sir, to love whom one cannot have?"
"Probably better," Lancelot said. "Certainly safer. — John Steinbeck

Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved. — John Steinbeck

Hurry home, darling," she said. "Hurry home." And how's that for a man to have! When I hung up, I stood by the phone all weak and leaky and happy if there is such a condition. I tried to think how it had been before Mary, and I couldn't remember, or how it would be without her, and I could not imagine it except that it would be a condition bordered in black. — John Steinbeck

A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief. — John Steinbeck

There are some times ... when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow. — John Steinbeck

I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. — John Steinbeck

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.
John Steinbeck in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters — John Steinbeck

I wonder if he had a Cathy and who see was. — John Steinbeck

Man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote about. - in a letter to George Albee — John Steinbeck

It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself. — John Steinbeck

It's a good thing to be loved, even late. — John Steinbeck

I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes. — John Steinbeck

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest. — John Steinbeck

I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers. — John Steinbeck

Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species? Can it be that we are afraid of what we may find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for if we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find ourselves true images of his kingdom, our eves the nebulae, and universes in our cells. — John Steinbeck

I think there must have been some other girl printed somewhere in his heart, for he was a man of love and his wife was not a woman to show her feelings. — John Steinbeck

I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, Thank God that son of a bitch is dead. — John Steinbeck

And then the men lay down and put their heads in the girls' laps and looked up into their faces. And they smiled at each other, a tired and peaceful and wonderful secret. — John Steinbeck

When the fair gold morning of April stirred Mary Hawley awake, she turned over to her husband and saw him, little fingers pulling a frog mouth at her. — John Steinbeck

He knew he was reeling down in Mary's estimation and he wanted her to love him and to admire him. At the same time there was a fine steel wire of truthfulness in him that cut off the heads of fast-traveling lies. — John Steinbeck

Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it. — John Steinbeck

If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. — John Steinbeck

I do love her, and that's odd because she is everything I detest in anyone else. — John Steinbeck

A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities- never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked. Thus Kino's future was real, but having set it up, other forces were set up to destroy it, and this he knew, so that he had to prepare to meet the attack. And this Kino knew also- that the gods do not love men's plans, and the gods do not love success unless it comes by accident. — John Steinbeck

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash
all of them
surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. — John Steinbeck

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, and their responsibilities have been decreed by our species ... the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. — John Steinbeck

Captain Loft believed that all women fall in love with a uniform and he did not see how it could be otherwise. — John Steinbeck

Men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them ... In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals ... What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? — John Steinbeck

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. — John Steinbeck

It is strange to an American that the English, who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable. — John Steinbeck

This is beyond understanding." said the king. "You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?"
And Merlin said quietly, "Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins. — John Steinbeck

The Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open ... Why, that makes a man great ... He can choose his course and fight it through and win ... I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest'. ch 24 — John Steinbeck