Quote

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.

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
Matter
Genius
Uncertainty
Topmost
Must
Cold
Vices
Unloved
Good
Talent
Horror
Frailty
Men
Influence
Indeed
Attempted
Love
Loved
Failure
Underneath
Life
Dies
Short
Cuts
Comes
Cutting
Talents
Certain
Dying
Layers

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Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.
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He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
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There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
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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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Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.
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I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
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I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.
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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
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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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A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.
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Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
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I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.
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What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.
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All of them had a restlessness in common.
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Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
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