Quote

Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.

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
Must
Chance
Souls
Things
Poor
Brave
Coins
Rather
Son
Wondered
Men
Hope
Luck
Sons
Life
Strong
Fortune
Beaten
Like
Another
Blood
Bags
Soul
Wise
Table
Enough
Gone
Tables

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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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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Some people there are who, being grown forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.
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The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.
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Such is the prestige of the Nobel Award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practised it through the ages.
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Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.
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When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. - Muley
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A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
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I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.
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There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
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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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I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
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Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.
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A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
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Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.
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Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
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The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
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The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.
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How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.
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