Quote

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

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
Life
Left
Chips
Character
Ill
Wells
Dust
Well
Integrity
Done
Clean
Hard
Honor
Brushed
Good
Question
Eden
Men
Evil
Avarice

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
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...to find where you are going, you must know where you are.
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It don't cost money to ask.
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Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.
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The story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-The sky is falling, cried Henny-Penny, and a piece of it fell on my tail.
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And their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
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You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
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Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
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Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.
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It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.
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The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
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Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.
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One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
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It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
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You're buying years of work, toil in the sun you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.
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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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So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.
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Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
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They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.
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I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.
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