John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flatand Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas Of Mice and Menand The Red Pony. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth27 February 1902
CountryUnited States of America
It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and selfinterest are the traits of sucess. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.
Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.
There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?
There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. John Steinbeck in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
Fear the day when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, distinctive in the universe.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there's an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there's an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
Somewhere in the world there is 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 add victory.
You give me much good counsel. I am tired of it.
Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: ""Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.