Quote

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

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
Pretty
Breaths
Fingernail
Probably
Degree
Warp
Path
Direction
Fingernails
Bigs
Stones
Stepped
Girl
Degrees
Stone
History
Caught
Soil
Garden
Acts
Sight
Breath
Nicked

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Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
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I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.
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Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
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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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An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.
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It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
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If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
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A journey is a person in itself no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
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When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
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How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
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It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing to be loved without satiety.
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Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.
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Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang. He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them. He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar. His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it. This is a dog of peace and tranquility.
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But you can't start over Only a boy can start over You and me Why, we're all that's been
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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
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Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.
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[He] fell right into the oldest conviction in the world-- that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest.
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