A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed.
A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half-remembered glory.
A fella ain't got a soul of his own, just a piece of a big soul, the one that belongs to everybody.
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.
A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.
A single best-seller can ruin a writer forever.
American cities are like badger holes ringed with trash.
I know this- a man got to do what he got to do.
(In The Grapes of Wrath).
(In The Grapes of Wrath).
I must be getting old because nowadays I find I'm more interested in the food I eat than in the girl who serves it.
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
Little presses write to me for manuscripts and when I write back that I haven't any, they write to ask if they can print the letter saying I haven't any.
Man is the only kind of varmint that sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
No one wants advice, only corroboration.
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant.
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment- social, political, or ethical- can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.
The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
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, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
There are some among us who live in rooms of experience we can never enter.
Time is the only critic without ambition.
To be alive at all is to have scars.
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
What a wonderful thing a woman is. I can admire what they do even if I don't understand why.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
Found 42 occurence(s) in 52,059 quotation(s).
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