Quote

Strength and success they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.

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
Criticism
Morality
Strength
Call
Success
Seems

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
John Steinbeck
Image
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
Image
To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.
John Steinbeck
Image
Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.
John Steinbeck
Image
It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
John Steinbeck
Image
I think I love you, Cal. -Abra I'm not good. -Cal Because you're not good. -Abra
John Steinbeck
Image
I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.
John Steinbeck
Image
It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
John Steinbeck
Image
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
John Steinbeck
Image
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
John Steinbeck
Image
The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.
John Steinbeck
Image
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
Image
An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.
John Steinbeck
Image
Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.
John Steinbeck
Image
The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
John Steinbeck
Image
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)
John Steinbeck
Image
To the heavens on the wings of a pig.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck