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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.
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
Comfort
Sloth
Grow
Apathy
Security
Cynicism
Grows
Named
Nations
Rebellion
Listless
Self
Bored
Slothful
World
Plenty
Submerged
Satisfaction
Destroyers
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To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
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There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.
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There is comfort in routine.
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I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
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We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
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He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?
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I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
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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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Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
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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 Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
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Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
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I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
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Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
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Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
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She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.
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There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.
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Yes, you should talk, he said. Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.
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There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.
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