Quote collection
697 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda."
"The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California."
"Only mediocrity escapes criticism."
"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."
"I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it."
"A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east."
"The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man."
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
"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."
"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
"I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why."
"Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping."
"It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it."
"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
"We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil."
"This is beyond understanding." said the king. "You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?" And Merlin said quietly, "Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins."
"I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen."
"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."
"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."
"This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected."