1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’ have no soul that was his’n. Says he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain’t no good ‘less it was with the rest, an’ was whole.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself. What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately. A man is a lonely thing.