Quote

The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up.

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
Things
Lasts
Hide
Men
Last
Curious
Give
Manage
Littles
Somewhere
Little
Guess
Everything
Sin
Shuck
Giving
Inside
Discomfort
Way
Ways
Sins

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
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...no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.
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I have seen too many men go down, and I never permit myself to forget that one day, through accident or under the charge of a younger, stronger knight, I too will go down.
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It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
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A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.
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I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.
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I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn't involved with loss. I didn't have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.
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..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
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I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.
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Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
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You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
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Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.
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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
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I think bullfights are for men who aren't very brave and wish they were.
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I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.
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For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.
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(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.
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When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. - Muley
John Steinbeck