Annie > Annie's Quotes

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”
― John Steinbeck

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“To be alive at all is to have scars.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“No one who is young is ever going to be old.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Intention, good or bad, is not enough.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“He never fell,
never slipped back,
never flew.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
― John Steinbeck

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“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.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent. ”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em. ”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“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. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“No one wants advice - only corroboration. ”
― John Steinbeck

“Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over...”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“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. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try to live so that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden