John Steinbeck

There's that fallow land, and here beside me is that fallow man. It seems a waste.

Maybe the foolishness is necessary, the dragon fighting, the boasting, the pitiful courage to be constantly knocking a chip off God's shoulder, and the childish cowardice that makes a ghost of a dead tree beside a darkening road. Maybe that's good and necessary, but—

Perhaps she wasn't even pretty, but she had the glow that makes men follow a woman in the hope of reflecting a little of it.

[The Hebrew] word timshel — Thou mayest — that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if Thou mayest — it is also true that Thou mayest not... [Thou mayest] makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth ... he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.

All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

A man's mind can't stay in time the way his body does.

... it is true of the spirit as it is true of battles — only the winners are remembered.

Once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means.

The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.