1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

There are times in war when the sharpest emotion is not fear, but loneliness and littleness.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.

He stopped, feeling lonely in his long speech.

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one.

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and draw new ones.

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.

Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface.