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John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck Quotes

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Famous John Steinbeck Quotes

“We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.”

MenWorldWholeGodHandsMightChoicesResponsibilityTakenDangerGloryTestsWhole WorldFearfulDeitiesLiving ThingsUnpreparedGodlikeLife Or DeathLordship
Book:America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
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“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

ThinkingWorldFirstsKindChildrenLittlesWholeJobsFallWalksGoneGrowing UpWiseGrowingDivineJudgmentAdultsSafetyGreenShiningSentencesGravesFallenPanicCrashTediousDesolationSure Thing
Author:John Steinbeck
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“I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the results of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.”

KnowsMenMindBelieveHumansDoeSometimesWholeProblemPainJoyI BelieveCausesBlackDarkSleepResultsMorningKnowingBloodActivityConcernTechniqueAcceptedReasoningJustifyHuman MindChestsEcstasyStomachBubblesElectricNot KnowingRejectedFacetsNew DirectionsClearness
Book:East of Eden
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“When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.”

WayWritingBookWholeStoriesMightCertainWaterAnimalBreakImpossibleSeaPagesLiftsFlatsBottlesKnivesDelicateWormsMarineBladesSea Water
Author:John Steinbeck
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“A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.”

WholeSeemsMovingAnimalEmotionBoysMysteryFeetNewsTownsShouldersNervousFasterFenceNervous System
Book:The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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