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The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’.
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
Philosophy
Topple
Lying
Bewildered
Purpose
Purposes
Words
Walls
Science
Meaningless
Tell
Lies
Littles
Wall
Little
Duty
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This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
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I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.
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You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.
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American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.
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This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
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A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
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If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
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I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
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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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I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
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Time is the only critic without ambition.
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He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
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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.
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Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?' she asked. 'I don't see how it could be any other way,' said Lee. 'Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
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..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
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If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
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