Quote

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
Satisfaction
Destroyers
Comfort
Sloth
Grow
Apathy
Security
Cynicism
Grows
Named
Nations
Rebellion
Listless
Self
Bored
Slothful
World
Plenty
Submerged

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In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.
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To the heavens on the wings of a pig.
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Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
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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.
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Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.
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For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.
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Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.
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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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Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.
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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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And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
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A journey is a person in itself no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
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A dog is a bond between strangers.
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A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.
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Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.
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But you can't start over Only a boy can start over You and me Why, we're all that's been
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Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.
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I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.
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Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
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