1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

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.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

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

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.

Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.

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?

In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.

It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.