TOPICS
SPEAKERS
HOME
BROWSE TOPICS
BROWSE SPEAKERS
◀ BACK

John Steinbeck

Other
Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
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.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
From شرق بهشت
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
It has always seemed strange to me...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.
From Cannery Row
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with a dead husband was not necessary, she cast about for some new unhappiness.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.

The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I gotta see them folks that's gone out on the road. I got a feelin' I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin' can give 'em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain't lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an' sad? They gonna need help. THey got to live before they can afford to die.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Religion
When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they know beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units - because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Benar. Kita tak pernah lagi menjumpai kebahagiaan yang setara dengan kebahagiaan masa kanak-kanak kita." Pablo mengangguk sedih.
From Tortilla Flat
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
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.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
From شرق بهشت
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
It has always seemed strange to me...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.
From Cannery Row
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with a dead husband was not necessary, she cast about for some new unhappiness.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.

The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I gotta see them folks that's gone out on the road. I got a feelin' I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin' can give 'em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain't lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an' sad? They gonna need help. THey got to live before they can afford to die.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Religion
When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they know beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units - because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Benar. Kita tak pernah lagi menjumpai kebahagiaan yang setara dengan kebahagiaan masa kanak-kanak kita." Pablo mengangguk sedih.
From Tortilla Flat
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
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.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
From شرق بهشت
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
It has always seemed strange to me...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.
From Cannery Row
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.
From The Winter of Our Discontent
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with a dead husband was not necessary, she cast about for some new unhappiness.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.

The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously.
From East of Eden
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I gotta see them folks that's gone out on the road. I got a feelin' I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin' can give 'em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain't lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an' sad? They gonna need help. THey got to live before they can afford to die.
From The Grapes of Wrath
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Religion
When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
From Travels with Charley: In Search of America
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they know beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units - because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Benar. Kita tak pernah lagi menjumpai kebahagiaan yang setara dengan kebahagiaan masa kanak-kanak kita." Pablo mengangguk sedih.
From Tortilla Flat
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness