Quote

For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

John Steinbeck

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John Steinbeck
Age: 66 †
Born: 1902
Born: February 27
Died: 1968
Died: December 20
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Salinas
California
John Ernst Steinbeck
Jr.
John Ernst Steinbeck
John Ernest Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr
Steinbeck
Something
Talent
Disparagement
Never
Greatest
Talents
Animal
Superior
Give
Whereas
Humans
Superiors
Giving
Satisfied
Thing
Animals
Made
Species

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If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
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I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
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for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.
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life passes by in a wink so try to never miss a moment of it
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“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
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A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
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There is comfort in routine.
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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?
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The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.
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Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.
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We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
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Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
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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 short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
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Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.
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A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
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The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.
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Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.
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