Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Then it is better, sir, to love whom one cannot have?" "Probably better," Lancelot said. "Certainly safer.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one to make a living in these times.
Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.
With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.
Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.
He said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god.
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.
There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.
It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
Lennie said quietly, "It ain't no lie. We're gonna do it. Gonna get a little place an' live on the fatta the lan'.
It is the nature of a person as he/she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.
for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
I should have known I am the rain. I am the land and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.
I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.
Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.
Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.
There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed
I need a dog pretty badly. I dreamed of dogs last night. They sat in a circle and looked at me and I wanted all of them.
I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.
The warfare between the unaroused male and female is constant and ferocious. Each blames the other for his loss of soul.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.
This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.
But Doc had one mental habit he could not get over. When anyone asked a question, Doc thought he wanted to know the answer.
The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.
A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.
One day we'll sit and you'll lay it out on the table, neat like a solitaire deck, but now - why, you can't find all the cards.
It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better.
The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.