Quote

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.

John Steinbeck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Close
Whatever
Easy
Remember
Ancestry
Look
Lazy
Looks
Catch
Take
Excuse
Way
Dare

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
John Steinbeck
Image
I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
John Steinbeck
Image
The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
John Steinbeck
Image
All great and precious things are lonely.
John Steinbeck
Image
Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him.
John Steinbeck
Image
I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
John Steinbeck
Image
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
John Steinbeck
Image
It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
John Steinbeck
Image
An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
John Steinbeck
Image
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
John Steinbeck
Image
Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.
John Steinbeck
Image
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
John Steinbeck
Image
This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.
John Steinbeck
Image
Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.
John Steinbeck
Image
At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.
John Steinbeck
Image
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.
John Steinbeck