John Steinbeck Quotes About Defeat

Quotes about: Defeat

• Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

  John Steinbeck

  Mean, Greatness, Victory

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.45, Penguin

• Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.

  John Steinbeck

  War, Fighting, Winning

  John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.344, Penguin

• He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

  John Steinbeck

  Ideas, Laughing, Victory

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.173, Penguin

• The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

  John Steinbeck

  War, Believe, Heart

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.146, Penguin

• The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West.... And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a mysterious new place, ... a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.

  John Steinbeck

  Country, Dream, Lonely

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