Quote

A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.

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
Thing
Animal
Communities
Beauty
Clearly
Anyone
Picture
Community
Merely
Another
Advantage
Worded
Cannot
Struggle
Unmasked
Look
Saying
Complicate
Looks
Study
Idealism

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But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.
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Niagara Falls is very nice. I'm very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.
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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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He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
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Saints can spring from any soil.
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Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.
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When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
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A man without words is a man without thought.
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Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.
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Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world
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How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
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Books are the best friends you can have they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
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Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
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Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.
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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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But a man needs company.
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The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.
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American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.
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In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
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