John Steinbeck Quotes About Joy

Quotes about: Joy

• It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Weed, Morning

  John Steinbeck (1997). “Tortilla Flat”, p.34, Penguin

• He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.

  John Steinbeck

  Father, Book, Eden

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.38, Penguin

• I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.

  John Steinbeck

  Taken, Hangover, Sleep

  "Travels With Charley: In Search of America". Book by John Steinbeck, Part 1, 1962.

• Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.

  John Steinbeck

  Air, People, Joy

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.30, Penguin

• She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall.

  John Steinbeck

  Strong, Hurt, Laughter

• I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Joy, Texture

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.95, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

  John Steinbeck

  Memories, Thinking, Long

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.51, Penguin

• Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight - the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards

  John Steinbeck

  Joy, Riches, Spirit

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.510, Penguin

• I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.

  John Steinbeck

  Children, Thinking, Joy

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.25, Penguin

• We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for thy can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.

  John Steinbeck

  Loss, Years, Joy

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.64, Penguin

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Morning, Pain, Believe

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.286, Penguin

• The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.

  John Steinbeck

  Loss, Joy, Trying

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.64, Penguin

• And her joy was nearly like sorrow.

  John Steinbeck

  Joy, Sorrow

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.59, Hamilton Books

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