John Steinbeck Quotes About Animals

Quotes about: Animals

• All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

  John Steinbeck

  War, Animal, Men

  John Steinbeck (2007). “Once There Was a War”, p.9, Penguin

• We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Trying, Lonesome

• A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

  John Steinbeck

  Stars, Loneliness, Teaching

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.441, Penguin

• We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerers. Possibly it feels good to these men to feel superior to animals, but does it not seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it? Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage.

  John Steinbeck

  Courage, Hunting, Animal

• We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought."

  John Steinbeck

  Loneliness, Animal, Trying

  "In Awe of Words". The Exonian, 75th anniversary edition, Exeter University, 1930.

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Moving, Animal, Boys

  John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.477, Penguin

• A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.

  John Steinbeck

  Struggle, Animal, Community

  Edward Flanders Ricketts, John Steinbeck (1978). “The Outer shores”

• For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Want Something, Giving

  John Steinbeck (1993). “The Pearl”, p.31, Penguin

• Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?

  John Steinbeck

  Cat, Animal, Monkeys

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.72, Penguin

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Marine

  "Cannery Row".

• [Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know—that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.

  John Steinbeck

  Art, Jobs, Animal

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.89, Penguin

• One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Law, Paleontology

• The human is the only guilty animal.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Humanity, Guilty

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.237, Penguin

• I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Men, Society

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