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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.

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

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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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We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
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Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.
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A man without words is a man without thought.
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Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
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Thou mayest rule over sin.
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A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.
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In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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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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The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.
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Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
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What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.
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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
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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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for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.
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The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
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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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Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
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Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
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This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.
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