Quote

Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.

John Steinbeck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Art
Demonstrate
Whole
Awe
Men
Partner
Partners
Critics
Stand
Literature
Eunuchs
Living
Envious

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
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
Image
All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
John Steinbeck
Image
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
John Steinbeck
Image
All great and precious things are lonely.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
John Steinbeck
Image
It isn't like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York.
John Steinbeck
Image
To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.
John Steinbeck
Image
No one who is young is ever going to be old.
John Steinbeck
Image
If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much - make it greedy, miserable and sick.
John Steinbeck
Image
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
John Steinbeck
Image
I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
John Steinbeck
Image
You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?
John Steinbeck
Image
For many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear.
John Steinbeck
Image
One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.
John Steinbeck
Image
All we got is the family unbroke.
John Steinbeck
Image
Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
John Steinbeck
Image
Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
John Steinbeck
Image
Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.
John Steinbeck
Image
Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
John Steinbeck