Quotes from The Winter of Our Discontent

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“To be alive at all is to have scars. ”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“You know how advice is - you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Intention, good or bad, is not enough.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent. ”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“If you want to keep a friend, never test him.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“...intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over...”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

“A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent

About the author

Popular quotes

“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is
also a way of signaling the importance of another person by
showing your willingness to give that person your rarest
resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation
reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in
some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.
Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“We all have shit on our shoes. We've just got to realize it so we don't track it into the house.”
― Karl Marlantes, quote from What It is Like to Go to War

“Nataşa’nın belki babasından geçmiş, bütün iyi kalpli insanlara has bir özelliği vardı: Karşısındakini olduğundan iyi görür, daha ilk bakıştan büyük bir heyecanla meziyetlerini büyütürdü. Bu çeşit insanların hayal kırıklığına, hele sebebin kendileri olduğunu bilerek uğramaları pek acı olur. Ne diye kendilerine verilebilecekten fazlasını umarlar sanki? Böyleleri, her an hayal kırıklığı tehlikesiyle karşılaşmaktansa, köşelerine çekilip dünyayla bağlantıyı kesmeli en iyisi. Dikkat ettim, köşeleri öyle severler ki, zamanla büsbütün yabanileşirler.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Insulted and Humiliated

“Couples take care of each other, Clare, that's what makes them a couple. And couples tell each other when something happens that scares them.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from The Next Always

“Ah, clever clogs, but it will have happened in one of my alternative lives. You know--the lives hot-shot scientists tell us we are living at the same time as this one we know about. Which being so, how do you know that what happens in one of your alternative lives doesn't sometimes leak through into your consciousness in this life, and make you sad that you aren't living that particular alternative life instead of this one? Don't you sometimes feel depressed for no reason you can think of? I do. And maybe that's why. We've had a leak from an alternative life and want that life now. Like wanting an ice cream when you were little, which you knew was in the freezer, but your mom wouldn't let you have it.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Postcards from No Man's Land

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.